Can a big shockwave disrupt a tornado and cease its formation?
In: Planetary Science
You’d need Superman level power to “reverse spin” then entire Mesocyclone structure the moment it begins rotating. That’s oversimplification, buy hey, this is EILI5 right? Or use that same power to add extra cold air in to kill the storm. Pretty much anything else would cause more local harm than the tornado would
The number of people in here who do not understand how much energy is contained in natural events is disturbing.
The time between “is that a tornado forming?” And “AAAAA tornado!” Is a lot shorter than you think.
Energy in isn’t a great idea, especially in uncontrolled fashion. You’re almost surely adding more chaos and devastation than would already exist.
Energy OUT is an interesting concept, but with present tech and understanding of physics and meteorology(very imprecise for daily life, let alone this task) we can’t even begin to tackle that kind of project.
Basically if we can remove energy from the cell/system before it turns into a major tornadic event, it stands to reason you can “power down” a storm. This is all super theoretical though and you’d have to be able to “discharge” that energy somewhere.
Even if we could do something tornados happen suddenly and we don’t know where they will form. Yes we know certain weather conditions can form tornados but a lot of times they don’t. And if it does, until it is about to happen we won’t know. And these happen over a wide area making up more than half the country. You would have to have massive amounts of stuff pre positioned in areas that might get a tornado and you would have to be able to deploy it almost immediately since you won’t get a lot of advanced warning of an actual tornado. Worse you would have to be ready on call for so many storms that could, but don’t, make tornados. Imagine how much we spend on the military, you would need about that much to do such a thing. We are talking hundreds of billions of dollars every year just to prevent maybe 100 million in damage. The worst year for tornado costs reached 700 million but it is usually under 100 million. If were that serious about mitigating the effects of tornados you could instead take a fraction of that money and build everyone a storm shelter in these areas and pay to rebuild their houses if they are hit which would be far cheaper than trying to stop them. Practically speaking doing the latter would be far cheaper and easier than the former.
Why can’t we just send a nuke into a tornado?
Let’s just dump some sharks in there. What could go wrong?
The sustainability of a tornado is less about what you see and more about the coordinated movement of air in a larger area. E.g., you can’t start or disrupt a whirlpool from the middle but only by handling all the water at radius.
Once a tornado has been verifiably predicted, enough time will have passed that It would have grown **so** strong, that it would require a nuclear explosion **far** more powerful than any previously tested and tried. It would work theoretically, but in reality it is implausible.
And even if you set it ablaze, it would be difficult to predict the consequences.
I need, according to regulations, a 300 ft range that is clear of any person or facility that is also protected by 10 ft cement walls just to do monthly proficiency training on 2.5 lbs of explosives. Something to disrupt a tornado on a whim would be impossible to predict and I’d have to get EPA permits out the wazoo depending on the area AND if I cause damage to a non government asset, expect your taxes to cover that. And I’ll need someone within about a mile distance to be watching the tornado actually come across the path of the Explosive charge so it’s effective. And there’s a chance it whips our set-up 100 yds and we just detonate a house. So I can’t speak for dropping bombs but the guys on the ground are not enthused by the notion
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