Floridians Are Dreaming of a Hurricane Weapon

Imagine the day when scientists could weaken the most dangerous hurricanes, or forecasters would know 24 hours in advance almost exactly where a storm would strike.

Just don’t count on it happening anytime soon.

The National Hurricane Center hopes that within 20 years it will be able to predict within 95 miles where a storm might go when it is two days out. It considers that its final level of accuracy.

As for stopping the storms, a Jupiter, Fla., company says it has developed a moisture-absorbing product to slow them down, but skeptics say it would require more large aircraft to drop the stuff than are available.

No other feasible method is on the horizon.

“Most schemes to weaken hurricanes grossly underestimate how strong a hurricane is,” said Chris Landsea, the hurricane center’s science and operations officer. “The only way to deal with them is to better prepare for them.”

Toward that end, progress is being made.

Federal and private scientists are developing more powerful computer models, satellite imagery and radar. In addition, as of this year, special radar devices are being placed on Air Force Reserve hurricane hunter aircraft to improve storm-intensity predictions. And small, pilotless aircraft are to be dispatched into storms for more precise wind and pressure readings.

With these tools, forecasters hope to shrink the cone of uncertainty -- and place fewer people under hurricane warnings.

Also, specialists at the National Hurricane Center in Miami-Dade County eventually might provide 10-day forecasts, now that five-day forecasts are as accurate as three-day forecasts were 10 years ago.

“The improvements have been dramatic,” said Robert M. Atlas, director of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, a federal complex in Miami. “But I don’t think there are many, if any, who think we’ll ever be perfect with forecasts.”

Many Floridians wish someone would do something -- anything -- to deflate the highly destructive storms.

“I’m sure there are explosives that could reduce the force of these hurricanes,” said Myron Jacobs, 90, of Fort Lauderdale, a retired oil company executive.

“The idea not to do anything, I don’t understand,” said Doris Katz, 61, of Delray Beach, a former teacher

But the storms are huge and incredibly powerful, Landsea said. For instance, to cool the ocean with ice would require every large tanker in the world to haul icebergs from the arctic and place them in front of the storm.

“If you tried to cool water from 85 to 75 degrees, yes, you would kill off a hurricane. But there’s no known way to do that,” he said.

As for bombs, they destroy only rigid structures, such as buildings; their shock waves would go right through a storm, Landsea said.

The federal government tried to deflate hurricanes under a cloud-seeding experiment from the 1960s to the 1980s. It ended without any real success.

But Dyn-O-Mat of Jupiter, Fla., insists it has the potential to slow down a major storm. It has developed SK-1000, a powdery polymer able to absorb hundreds of times its weight in water. If enough were poured into the eye of a hurricane, the storm would bog down, said Peter Cordani, the company’s CEO.

Dyn-O-Mat is working with scientists at six universities, including Florida State, to determine how much of the substance would be needed and whether there would be any environmental consequences. It hopes to test the material on a thunderstorm this summer and has a fleet of Boeing 747s on standby to drop it, Cordani said.

But Hugh Willoughby, a professor of earth sciences at Florida International University, said it would take thousands, if not millions, of tons of SK-1000 to have any effect.

Some experts say it would take 300 gigantic C5A military transports, operating around the clock, to make SK-1000 work -- and the Air Force has fewer than 130 of that kind of aircraft.

“That’s the general problem with these hurricane-modification schemes: No one calculates how much stuff it would take,” Willoughby said.

The biggest problem with forecasting hurricanes is that the atmosphere is too chaotic, said Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist for the Weather Underground, a weather-tracking website. The best way to make progress, he said, is to develop more powerful computer models and feed them as much accurate data as possible.