This article does not mention silver oxide, but regardless of what chemicals are used why don’t we attempt to weaken catastrophic storms in any way?
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/jun/24/thisweekssciencequestions3](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/jun/24/thisweekssciencequestions3)
In: Planetary Science
The U.S. government did experiment with modifying hurricanes for decades, starting with the military-sponsored Project Cirrus in 1947. The Hurricane Research Division of NOAA ran Project Stormfury, which seeded hurricanes with silver iodide, in the 60s and early 70s.
The problem was that it was ultimately impossible say whether anything a storm did or didn’t do after seeding was the result of the intervention.
The theory behind cloud seeding is that the “seeds” (tiny bits of silver iodide or whatnot) encourage the formation of ice crystals, which then precipitate out as snow or rain. Ultimately, it was observed that hurricanes do not have enough supercooled water (water that is below the freezing point, but has not turned to ice yet) for that kind of seeding to work, and the program was canceled as scientifically infeasible.
See [https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hrd_sub/modification.html](https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hrd_sub/modification.html)
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