CONTROL THE PATH AND POWER OF HURRICANES LIKE MILTON? FORGET IT, SCIENTISTS SAY

Hurricanes are humanity’s reminder of the uncontrollable, chaotic power of Earth’s weather.

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Milton’s powerful push toward Florida just days after Helene devastated large parts of the Southeast likely has some in the region wondering if they are being targeted. In some corners of the internet, Helene has already sparked conspiracy theories and disinformation suggesting the government somehow aimed the hurricane at Republican voters.

Besides discounting common sense, such theories disregard weather history that shows the hurricanes are hitting many of the same areas they have for centuries. They also presume an ability for humans to quickly reshape the weather far beyond relatively puny efforts such as cloud-seeding.

“If meteorologists could stop hurricanes, we would stop hurricanes,” said Kristen Corbosiero, a professor of atmospheric and environmental sciences at the University at Albany. “If we could control the weather, we would not want the kind of death and destruction that’s happened.”

Here’s a look at what humans can and can’t do when it comes to weather:

THE POWER OF HURRICANES, HEIGHTENED BY CLIMATE CHANGE

A fully developed hurricane releases heat energy that is the equivalent of a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes — more than all the energy used at a given time by humanity, according to National Hurricane Center tropical analysis chief Chris Landsea.

And scientists are now finding many ways climate change is making hurricanes worse, with warmer oceans that add energy and more water in the warming atmosphere to fall as rain, said Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.