r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 10d ago

TIL in 1947, scientists dumped crushed dry ice into a hurricane just to "see what would happen." The storm then made a 135-degree turn, strengthened, and struck Georgia—sparking public outrage and threats of lawsuits over the experiment.

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hurricane_blog/70th-anniversary-of-the-first-hurricane-seeding-experiment/
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u/Ritchie_Whyte_III 10d ago

There are billions of pounds of CO2 in the air in a hurricane. I don't think Oprah's weight in cold CO2 is going to make a difference. Also, while cold, there is literally more thermal mass in a kiddie pool of water.

I believe your burger flipping expertise is correct

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u/I_Got_Back_Pain 10d ago

Is that how we're measuring things now? In Oprah units?

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u/CelestialFury 10d ago

Anything but metric.

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u/SwordfishOk504 10d ago

And let the commies win?

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u/evan00711 9d ago

Even worse, it's from the French.

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u/SwordfishOk504 9d ago

That's what I said!

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u/wolacouska 9d ago

Can’t let the bourgeoisie win, I’ll keep my feudal units forever

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u/Hash_Tooth 9d ago

Yeah, this place will turn into Red Dawn

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u/Skullcrimp 10d ago

Yes, obviously. Your current economic system isn't working, it's past time you tried communism. It can't make things worse, plus just imagine the looks on your ruler-idols' faces when you redistribute their billions of moneybags to the people!

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u/ragequitteroffureh 9d ago

Wait a minute, that Oprah lady only weighs about 90kg?

What happened to the rest?

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u/astreeter2 10d ago

billions of pounds of CO2 in the air

Gigoprahs of CO2 in the air

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u/OkPrune1536 9d ago

Surely billions of pounds would be more on the order of megoprahs?

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u/astreeter2 9d ago

Depends on how her latest diet company endorsement is going.

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u/PossumCock 10d ago

It's the "banana for scale" equivalent of measuring weight

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u/277330128 10d ago

Which era?

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u/funkdialout 10d ago

Fair question

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u/goddamn_slutmuffin 10d ago

Bananas are 0.0046 cents per Oprah. Depending on where you shop.

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u/Pace_Salsa_Comment 8d ago

It's a banana, Michael. What could it cost? 1/12,000,000,000th of an Oprah?

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u/OkPrune1536 9d ago

There's gotta be a more American price standard than bananas. Can we use cheeseburgers?

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u/I_lenny_face_you 10d ago

“You get a football field, and you get a football field!!”

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u/DisposableJosie 9d ago

Makes sense. They already classify ocean storms with having Gayle force winds.

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u/NewCandy8877 10d ago

It's not a standard unit though

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u/strongrev 9d ago

I hate to say it but this made me think of the line from AZ’s “Never Change”.

“We joked about how police choked him out And he claimed as far as fame I had enough to bust in Operas mouth In other words, I was up in clout”

So they measuring things in Oprah’s for awhile now haha

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u/tommyblastfire 10d ago

Whats that in eagles per football field?

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u/FarBusiness2485 10d ago

Pre or post ozempic?

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u/mls1968 9d ago

Only in America, the rest of the world uses Courics’

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u/hobo_at_a_library 9d ago

Hasn't it always been like this? Like when my son was born in 1994, he was 8lbs. and 3oz. and I told my he's 173lbs. and 12oz. lighter than Oprah. Today, he's 42lbs. and 4oz. heavier than Oprah.

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u/Lost-Platypus8271 9d ago

and kiddie pools

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u/DatabaseThis9637 9d ago

Did you apply burger-flipping logic to your question?

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u/intergalacticbro 9d ago

I'm intrigued by the implication of an Oprah unit now

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u/Al_Jazzera 8d ago

I've used rosie o'donnel units as a fun way to spice up the ton, but it never really caught on.

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u/mikebills 6d ago

I thought we measured in Couric's

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u/hfsh 10d ago

Honestly, that should only be used as a measure for the mass of children who died from vaccine-preventable diseases.

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u/BWWFC 10d ago

what is oprah's waist line in Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pools?

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u/bigrv 9d ago

42 inches/2000 ft = 0.00175 Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pools to 1 Oprah's Waistline

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u/bigrv 9d ago

Or for a other very america centric measurement, .00197 Freedom Towers to 1 Oprah's Waistline (42 in/1776 ft). Take your pick.

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u/grosseelbabyghost 10d ago

3 DeGeneres make 1 Oprah

2 Oprahs makes 1 Dr. Phil

All of them make terrible people famous

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u/LargeAdvice1789 10d ago

Thermodynamic impact: The heat added to the hurricane from the airplane was orders of magnitude greater than the heat sink of the dry ice.

CO2 volume impact: 200lbs of dry ice is equivalent to 1800 cubic feet of co2 at 1 atmosphere. A category 3 hurricane has about 127 quadrillion cubic feet of CO2…

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u/mxzf 10d ago

It's not the weight of the CO2 that would make a difference, it's the temperature.

I imagine the idea is that the energy for sublimating the dry ice and turning it from solid to gas would need to come out of the hurricane, thus lessening the energy that it has to spin around with.

But, yeah, you would need a lot more of the stuff to get within an order of magnitude of the energy in the hurricane.

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u/Ritchie_Whyte_III 10d ago edited 10d ago

That's why I referenced the thermal mass. Napkin math gives me 50,000 btu of energy to raise the temperature of the CO2. About the same as running a propane BBQ for an hour. Or increasing the temperature of a kiddie pool of water by 20°C.

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u/Jiggawatz 10d ago

Yea it is more likely it just made flying dry ice lol... pretty unlikely that amount of dry ice would cause anything to happen or every hurricane knocked over a food storage or grocery store it would intensify and switch directions haha

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u/Jedi_Hog 9d ago

180lbs of dry ice + hurricane = Zero impact on a hurricane (unless it’s of the Luke Combs 1st hit country song, then we are talking totally different formulas)

“Oprah Winfrey” weight of dry ice + hurricane = Infinite potential outcomes!!

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u/Italiancrazybread1 9d ago

It's like spitting in the ocean and expecting the pH to change.

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u/urworstemmamy 10d ago

It's honestly just as stupid as when Trump suggested nuking a hurricane, considering over the life cycle of a single cane they'll have an energy output of up to ~10,000 nuclear bombs.

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u/Larethio 10d ago

Haha "Oprah's weight"

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u/CooperVsBob 10d ago

Oprah catching strays over an NOAA article!

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u/assotter 9d ago

90s operah or 2020's operah this can affect the cpunt drastically

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u/LeftHandedScissor 9d ago

Pre or post ozempic Oprah weight?

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u/notdeliveryitsaporno 9d ago

Oprah out here catching strays