Ah yes, I remember. It's called Dyn-O-Gel. Here's one of the many articles that I read this upon, only this one mentions it in the year 2001. I could've sworn it was at least 80 years before this, but again I may be wrong:
I think what I read was that they THOUGHT about this, and it MAY work but it would just cost way too much $ with each Hurricane approaching, so it was never attempted. Guess this is the first try.
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DYN-O-GEL!
A common garden product is the latest suggested remedy for hurricanes
September 7, 2001 Here we are, over three months into hurricane season, just days from the historical peak of September 10, and not a single Atlantic system has reached so much as minimal hurricane status. While scientists are baffled by this phenomenon -- the second latest start in 50 years of recording, we have the answer. The following message, which arrived at the National Hurricane Center, makes it perfectly clear: "I am able to stop hurricanes and I am allowed to do so. I have only recently become aware of the extent of my powers and the understanding of the internal mechanics in the last eight months. Therefore . . . I have a responsibility to prevent hurricanes.''
There you go. This anonymous woman has personally zapped the tropics with her paranormal powers, rendering the producer of the world's most destructive forces virtually impotent. She has spared countless lives and damage costs while pissing off a ton of hungry surfers.
"The X-File," as it was dubbed by hurricane center director Max Mayfield, is chock full of similarly outlandish suggestions for stopping hurricanes -- cooling them with icebergs, exploding them with nuclear bombs, blowing them away with giant fans, even a hand-held remote control that redirects storms with gamma rays as easily as changing the channel. "Solutions" for hurricanes have been around forever. While none of them work, they at least provide researchers with a hearty laugh, but a recent suggestion by a Florida man doesn't have them doubled over with laughter.
"Healthy skepticism" is the official word from the hurricane center over Peter Cordani's amazing Dyno-O-Gel. As the story goes, Cordani's "Eureka" moment came a couple years ago as he was twiddling around in his parents' flowerbed. He was using a common garden product, known as Soil Moist, a powder that can absorb 2000 times its weight in water. When placed alongside a plant's roots, it swells with water that gradually feeds the plant. If that is the case, Cordani reasoned, then a whole heap of the stuff dropped into the center of a hurricane could sap the storm of its moisture, thus depriving it of force. He formulated a similar product and set out to change the course of history.
Upon meeting water, the miracle powder morphs into blobs of gel. So imagine if you will massive blobs of jelly being whipped around the guts of a hurricane. Talk about the shit hitting the fan. Supposedly, the substance is non-toxic and environmentally sound, and it actually dissolves in salt water. Cordani and company conducted a test of the product on a storm cloud this summer and were encouraged with the results. The cloud disappeared, or so they say.
Scientists site the experiment as "problematic" and remain skeptical of the potential of such a product. Christopher Landsea, a research meteorologist with NOAA, claims the gel could have adverse effects. "When you change water vapor and make it into droplets, you release latent heat and that fuels the hurricane,'' says Landsea. "If the gel makes it rain faster, that's not going to help dissipate the hurricane at all.''
Furthermore, the amount of Dyn-O-Gel needed to impact something as powerful as a hurricane is overwhelming. In the Hurricane Research Division's official response to the flood of Dyn-O-Queries, they state, "Each square kilometer would require 10 tons of goop. If we take the eye to be 20 kilometers in diameter, surrounded by a 20-kilometer thick eyewall, that's 3,769.91 square kilometers, requiring 37,699.1 ton of Dyn-O-Gel. A C-5A heavy-lift transport airplane can carry a 100-ton payload. So that treating the eyewall would require 377 sorties. Thus to keep the eyewall doped up, you'd need to deliver this much Dyn-O-Gel every hour-and-a-half or so." We're talking supertankers full of the stuff, navigating under seriously horrifying conditions at a cost of billions of dollars.
Cordani's company, Dyn-O-Mat, seems to have enough financial support to continue testing, and he hopes to eventually sell the product to the government. The fact this admitted non-scientist at least has the fellows in the white lab coats holding a straight face is a major accomplishment. Most suggestions don't make it beyond the dreaded X-File. Most of the "inventors" receive a canned response, thanking them for their interest and suggesting in a nice way that they get a life.
Says Landsea, "Perhaps the best solution is not to try to alter or destroy the tropical cyclones, but just learn to co-exist better with them. Since we know that coastal regions are vulnerable to the storms, enforce building codes that can have houses stand up to the force of the tropical cyclones. Also the people that choose to live in these locations should be willing to shoulder a fair portion of the costs in terms of property insurance - not exorbitant rates, but ones which truly reflect the risk of living in a vulnerable region." Sound advice, certainly, but compared with gamma lasers, nukes and supernatural powers, it's kind of boring. And if we could only convince some of these masterminds to come over to our side -- to direct their powers at creating hurricanes, then we'd be in business.
--Jason Borte
Sounds like something you would see in movies.
I'll try to find out this article.
same thought popped in my head at the time