We discussed various means of mitigating hurricanes in the comments to this post, but now comes a southern Florida businessman with a different idea.

Color me extremely skeptical. My confidence is less than buoyed by his association with Ed Mitchell, definitely one of the wackier Apollo astronauts, but hey, it's his money, and if by some miracle it works, great. Of course, we won't ever really know if it works, at least for this particular storm, because there's no control on the experiment (i.e., we'll have no idea what would have happened if he hadn't done anything).

Neh. I prefer the more spectacular methods proposed back in the 50's. Nuke 'em!:-)

I could be wrong, I know nothing about hurricanes but this idea sounds a bit daft because it only works if the sponges, filled with water, drop from the sky and take the guts out of the storm. I they don't drop out of the sky you've turned bird-shot into buckshot.

Heh. A kitty litter super-bomb.

I think it wise to defer to NOAA on this one. It looks like they get this a lot, as it's in their hurricane FAQ:

"Why don't we try to destroy tropical cyclones by
adding a water absorbing substance ?"
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/tcfaqHED.html

They specifically address the substance this guy is advocating in two ways:
1. They modeled taking the water down in big chunks in stead of little drops and got an insignificant improvement.
2. They calculate the amount of this stuff it would take to achieve this statistically questionable result to be 37,699.1 tons.

They have several others as well in section C:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/tcfaqHED.html

This sounds similar to someting GE tried in the 40s: http://www.rbs2.com/w2.htm

NOAA had Project Storm Fury that tried to update it in the 70s, but I think it went nowhere as well.

Of course, Ivan is now back up to a Cat. 5. Can we blame this guy for it, or is it still Bush's fault? :-)

Has anyone done any serious modelling on what would hhappen if the US Air Force took on a hurricane. You know, something like a dozen MOABs designed to suck the wind pattern in some direction or another, or to disperse it altogether.

Or would that just be spitting in the wind.