Can Humans Destroy Tornadoes?
By Erica Grow on July 21, 2012, 10:46pm
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I got an interesting question from a viewer, Jon, in my inbox recently. And being that today is the anniversary of the mini-tornado outbreak of 2010 here in Connecticut, I thought there was no better day to answer the question! Jon asked if we could destroy a tornado before it even forms by flying into it, maybe with a helicopter. Perhaps the strong buffeting winds of the chopper blades would disrupt the wind flow in a thunderstorm to such an extent that the thunderhead can't organize into a funnel cloud or tornado!
The helicopter theory is an interesting one for sure. I don't know enough about helicopters to know if they can withstand the strong updrafts and downdrafts in a tornadic thunderstorm, but assuming that they can, I still think the winds in a storm are just too powerful, and on too large a scale, for a helicopter to be able to prevent a tornado from forming. Even a huge chopper like a Chinook is only 100 feet long. Tornadoes vary in diameter between about 50 feet at the smallest to nearly 2 miles at the widest! The difference in scale can potentially be staggering. And, as of now, meteorologists have no means to determine how big, wide, or strong a tornado will be before it forms. In fact, the wind speed of a tornado cannot be assessed while the funnel is still in existence! Our only means of determining wind speed in a tornado is by assessing the damage path that the storm leaves behind.
Which leads to the larger overriding problem for this scenario. As of right now, tornado formation is too erratic and difficult to predict. Of the tornado warnings issued, typically about 75% of these warnings are "false alarms" in which a tornado is never reported or confirmed. So, if we sent a chopper into each tornado warning (more than 1300 issued every year), we could potentially be wasting millions of dollars in the course of a year!
While I think the helicopter idea is intriguing, ultimately it's impractical. For now, our best bet is to be vigilant to the threat of tornadoes, and to practice proper tornado safety if the situation arises. For more on tornado safety, check out this article by Scott Cimini!
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