Project Stormfury
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Project Stormfury was an attempt to weaken tropical cyclones (hurricanes) by flying aircraft into storms and seeding the eyewall with silver iodide. The project was run by the United States Government from 1962 to 1983.
The hypothesis was that the silver iodide would cause supercooled water in the storm to freeze, disrupting the inner structure of the hurricane. In the 1980s, it was shown that most hurricanes do not contain enough supercooled water for cloud seeding to be effective. Additionally, researchers found that unseeded hurricanes often undergo the same structural changes that were expected from seeded hurricanes. This finding called Stormfury's successes into question, as the changes reported now had a natural explanation.
The last experimental flight was flown in 1971, due to a lack of candidate storms and a changeover in NOAA's fleet. More than a decade after the last modification experiment, Project Stormfury was officially cancelled.
Although Project Stormfury failed to definitively affect changes to hurricanes, the attempt was not without merit. The observational data and storm lifecycle research generated by Stormfury helped improve meteorologists' ability to forecast the movement and intensity of future hurricanes.
Hurricanes seeded by Project Stormfury
- Hurricane Esther (1961): Esther predated the official start of Project Stormfury, but the attempt helped lead to the project's creation.
- Hurricane Beulah (1963)
- Hurricane Debbie (1969)
- Hurricane Ginger (1971)
In fiction
In the 2003 film Maximum Velocity, Project Storm Fury is an American military project to create hurricanes as a weapon of mass destruction.