Can a big shockwave disrupt a tornado and cease its formation?
In: Planetary Science
So this was actually an idea in the 1800s, back during the Weather Bureau. A lot of people had this idea, and there were papers even written on it, that they would telegraph and have an explosion go off that would stop a tornado. It was quite popular back then. But now meteorologists know a lot better how this works.
So here’s a problem with stopping a tornado. A tornado exists because there are these different pressure gradients, and wind, and spinning of air being pulled in. And it can be a rather wide area, I mean we’re talking about several miles even, that are affected by this. On top of that, this actual vortex of a tornado, and the rotation above it, can extend upward like 30,000 feet.
So even if you did plant a huge bomb and you blew up the low-level rotation, most likely it would just reform almost immediately. In order to blow up the entire cyclone, the entire thunderstorm updraft that’s going, you know, 40,000, 50,000 feet in the sky and several miles wide, well, you’d have to blow up a hydrogen bomb. You’d have to—an incredible amount of power. That would tear apart any updraft and kill the thunderstorm, at least that’s what you’d hope would happen but watch out thunderstorms exist for a reason the entire atmosphere is unstable and there is lift so you might just end up with a thunderstorm again and a radioactive tornado
Obviously that would be more destructive than any tornado in history. So you remember when Trump wanted to nuke the the hurricane? Even a small supercell tornado can have a large depth and a large area of pressure acting on it that would be virtually unaffected by any conventional explosives. Simply the amount of energy needing to stop a tornado is not worth it.
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