Insights on Environmental Effects

Sherry Seethaler

Tempest Tech

Why can’t the wind wall of a hurricane be zapped with lasers, disrupting the airflow and degrading these destructive monsters to just simple passing storms?

The first hurricane-modification mission, Project Cirrus, in October 1947, resulted in outraged citizens and threats of legal action. The targeted hurricane, which was heading east away from the coast of Florida before intervention, turned around and pummeled the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. From what we know now, the turn likely had nothing to do with the intervention, but the inauspicious beginning cast a pall over hurricane-modification efforts.

A couple bad hurricane years renewed interest in hurricane research and ...