Here's an idea -- stop thinking about destroying hurricanes, scientists say, and spend more time preparing for them.
Hurricanes can be frozen, nuked or blown away with really, really big fans. If we build a tall wall, they'll hit it and bounce right back over the ocean. Wait, barges that pump up cool ocean water -- that will kill 'em.
Actually, no. They won't. Not even close. None of it.
Hurricane myths are flourishing, experts said Thursday, another consequence of the recent swarm of catastrophic storms that struck Florida and other areas -- often after days of sky-high stress and suspense.
''You can see them coming sometimes a week in advance,'' said scientist Chris Landsea, who helped conduct a hurricane-myth workshop at the Governor's Hurricane Conference in Fort Lauderdale. 'So the natural question is, `What can we do to get rid of them?' ''
Here, as a public service, is the answer:
Nothing.
Not even a nuclear bomb?
''A nuclear bomb is just a hiccup to a hurricane,'' said Landsea, the National Hurricane Center's science and operations officer. ``And then you have a radioactive hurricane. Not good.''
`EXASPERATING'
And yet the ideas keep flooding in.
''It can get pretty exasperating, getting these same questions all the time,'' said Steve Letro, the National Weather Service's chief forecaster in Jacksonville.
On Tuesday, during a visit to Sun City, south of Tampa, President Bush was told by a man in the crowd about a way to destroy hurricanes using ``the coldest thing in the universe.''
Bush: ``To control hurricanes?''
Man: ``Right.''
Bush: ``Where were you last year?''
A day earlier, faxes arrived at the hurricane center, in Miami Beach city offices and at The Miami Herald promoting a plan to employ 25 barges -- ``with two pumps and four pipeing [sic] systems each vessel.''
The proponent said this would bring up from the depths enough cool water to kill a hurricane deader than dead.
Nah, not really, Landsea said.
It's all a matter of scale. Hurricanes are fantastically enormous, immensely powerful phenomena. One measure of that: Every second, a hurricane generates as much energy as every power plant on Earth combined.
Pumping up cool water? ''You would need 3,000 pipes,'' Landsea said. And in the right place at the right time in advance. ``Just not feasible.''
Towing icebergs and placing them in the hurricane's path? ``You would need all the ships in the world.''
Seeding hurricane clouds with silver iodide so the storm rains itself out over the ocean? That was actually tried in the 1960s. Didn't work. ``The pellets just went splash in the ocean.''
Building giant walls or mile-high fans along the coast? ``Let's not even talk about that.''
OTHER MYTHS
Other, slightly more scientifically based myths presented for discussion Thursday:
? To determine the true speed of a hurricane's winds, add the forecaster's estimate of sustained winds to the storm's forward speed. So if a storm has 100-mph maximum sustained winds and it's crossing the state at 25 mph, the winds really are blowing at 125 mph?
A South Florida TV weather forecaster repeatedly made those calculations during last year's hurricanes.
''Wrong. Don't do that,'' Landsea said. ``We already take all of that into account when we issue wind-speed estimates.''
? If you ignore evacuation orders and survive one hurricane, you can happily do the same again.
Bad idea. Each hurricane is different.
''The myth that really needs to be busted is that you make your decisions based purely on past experience,'' said Bart Hagemeyer, chief forecaster in Melbourne. ``You don't want to diss one storm based on an experience with an earlier storm.''
? Global warming is significantly increasing the number and intensity of storms.
This is the subject of heated scientific debate, but Landsea maintains that there is no proven link between global warming and the number of storms and only a tiny link to the intensity of storms.
`MITIGATE THE DAMAGE'
Last year, he said, global warming may have strengthened Hurricane Katrina's winds by only 1 percent or 2 percent. ''We can't even measure that,'' he said. ``It's in the noise level.''
But, getting back to the start, is there nothing we can do about hurricanes?
'In my lifetime and in my kids' lifetimes, the only thing we will be able to do is mitigate the damage,'' Landsea said. ``We can't change hurricanes, but let's change how we prepare for them and respond to them.''
Source: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14560113.htm
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