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Tornado Fighters

zer0vector

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I thought you all might find this site a bit humorous.

Tornado Fighters

I'm not sure if this is a joke or not, but he did approach the NWS for funding:

http://www.tornadofighters.com/tornadoletter2.gif

I thought I'd do a back of the envelope calculation to figure the feasability, but it's a bit beyond me at the moment, so I'll refer to the "original" back of the envelope calculation.

During the first nuclear bomb test, Fermi dropped some pieces of paper on the ground, and measured their displacement to in turn measure the yield of the bomb. He was about 10 km away, and pieces of paper moved about 40 cm. The yield of the bomb was around 20 kilotons.

So a 20 kiloton bomb displaces the air about 40 cm at 10 km, and this guy thinks 5 sticks of dynamite are going to disrupt a tornado?
 
Tornadoes varie greatly in size. The largest F-5 (rated on the Fujita scale) tornadoes can be over a half mile in diameter.
 
SquishyDave said:
I like tornadoes. They're pretty.
Click to expand...

You must never have been in one. Yes, they are awesome sights to behold, but I would never call a mass of dust and debris swirlling like a blender at 200m.p.h. cleaving a swath of destruction up to a mile wide "pretty."
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
You must never have been in one. Yes, they are awesome sights to behold, but I would never call a mass of dust and debris swirlling like a blender at 200m.p.h. cleaving a swath of destruction up to a mile wide "pretty."
Click to expand...
Well I haven't acutally been in one, no. If you are going to yell at me everytime I say something stupid, I'll just have to stop saying stupid things.

Ok how 'bout. I like tornadoes, they remind me of how insignificant humans are.
 
This site really has me laughing.

I hope it's meant as a joke, because I'd hate to think I'm a mean person who laughs at people's ignorance.
 
SquishyDave said:
Well I haven't acutally been in one, no. If you are going to yell at me everytime I say something stupid, I'll just have to stop saying stupid things.

Ok how 'bout. I like tornadoes, they remind me of how insignificant humans are.
Click to expand...

I'm not chastizing you on the core issue... I'm chastizing your choice of adjective.

Hell, the first time I saw the thread title I thought it was about European Military Aircraft. :cool:
 
During the first nuclear bomb test, Fermi dropped some pieces of paper on the ground, and measured their displacement to in turn measure the yield of the bomb. He was about 10 km away, and pieces of paper moved about 40 cm. The yield of the bomb was around 20 kilotons.

So a 20 kiloton bomb displaces the air about 40 cm at 10 km, and this guy thinks 5 sticks of dynamite are going to disrupt a tornado?
Click to expand...

As far as I recall (I'll try and verify this) the pieces of tissue paper were dropped to measure the radiation yield, or at least the particle radiation. The actual air displacement would have come quite a bit later and I have no idea as to the magnitude of this.

That said, I'm not sure that you're going to stop a tornado with a missile launcher. I don't think this idea makes much sense at all. From the Tornado Fighters website:

Remove the water vapor from the tornado equation and the tornado is reduced. Fill the cloud wall with water burning flares and the chance of tornado reduced!
Click to expand...

Water burning flares? :confused:
 
During the first nuclear bomb test, Fermi dropped some pieces of paper on the ground, and measured their displacement to in turn measure the yield of the bomb. He was about 10 km away, and pieces of paper moved about 40 cm. The yield of the bomb was around 20 kilotons.

So a 20 kiloton bomb displaces the air about 40 cm at 10 km, and this guy thinks 5 sticks of dynamite are going to disrupt a tornado?
Click to expand...

As far as I recall (I'll try and verify this) the pieces of tissue paper were dropped to measure the radiation yield, or at least the particle radiation. The actual air displacement would have come quite a bit later and I have no idea as to the magnitude of this.

That said, I'm not sure that you're going to stop a tornado with a missile launcher. I don't think this idea makes much sense at all. From the Tornado Fighters website:

Remove the water vapor from the tornado equation and the tornado is reduced. Fill the cloud wall with water burning flares and the chance of tornado reduced!
Click to expand...

Water burning flares? :confused:
 
I'm reminded of a comment I saw from a meteorologist regarding hurricanes and nukes once.

Someone had the bright idea of using a nuke to disrupt a hurricane. They ran the models and what they wound up with was a radioactive hurricane.

Talk about frying pan/fire...
 
Hamish said:


As far as I recall (I'll try and verify this) the pieces of tissue paper were dropped to measure the radiation yield, or at least the particle radiation. The actual air displacement would have come quite a bit later and I have no idea as to the magnitude of this.
Click to expand...

I remember the experiment from one of my classes last year. We were able to calculate the yield of the bomb (to a very good accuracy) simply by knowing the displacement of the paper. By extrapolating this distance back to a total volume change of a hemisphere of air with a radius of 10 km, and knowing the specific heat of the air, you can calculate the total temperature change in the air. The temperature change then gives you energy yield.

If I can find a more rigorous calculation I'll post it.
 
Just another funny point about the site:

Why do you need a camouflaged vehicle to fight a tornado?
 
Hamish said:

From the Tornado Fighters website:
-------Quote-------
Remove the water vapor from the tornado equation and the tornado is reduced. Fill the cloud wall with water burning flares and the chance of tornado reduced!
-------End Quote-------

Water burning flares? :confused:
Click to expand...

Terrrrrrrific. Now we don't have a tornado, we have a FLAMING tornado. Good move.


Tell me its a parody - I'm afraid to go look at the site.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
I'm reminded of a comment I saw from a meteorologist regarding hurricanes and nukes once.

Someone had the bright idea of using a nuke to disrupt a hurricane. They ran the models and what they wound up with was a radioactive hurricane.

Talk about frying pan/fire...
Click to expand...

That nuke idea reminds of a 'Letter to the Editor' that I saw in my local paper some years ago where the writer had an idea to drop a few tons of chipped ice on a hurricane to stop it.

I did some rough calculations and determined that it would take millions of tons of ice to do something of that magnitude.

Ugh!
 
But the last outbreak of tornados (Nov. 6-7, 2002 Alabama to Ohio) killed 25-35 people.
Click to expand...

Wow that's quite a margin of error, don't you think. What are the normal standard deviations for death counts?
 
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