Attempts at weather modification in the United States began in earnest in the 1940s and grew in the 1950s, as government officials and researchers pursued ways of shaping the weather to suit national needs. They sought to improve flight safety, bring moisture to drought-prone areas, protect crops, and more. Others wanted to use the weather for military advantage or to stop hurricanes before they could reach the coast. Much of the research focused on cloud seeding, in which researchers added agents like silver iodide to clouds to produce precipitation. The bulk of the research and discussion focused on precipitation and large storm systems like hurricanes, but tornado research also included speculation about weather control.
In 1961, a civil engineer sent a letter to the director of the National Severe Storms Project (established in 1960 and later renamed the National Severe Storms Laboratory, or NSSL). The letter proposed using unmanned aircraft to “fly through the upper part of tornadoes” and use rockets to launch napalm into the tornado to increase the temperature and “cut off the tornado.” Accompanying the proposal was a sketch of a tornado and proposed rocket trajectory. The author had drawn a tiny house near the base of the tornado and a stick figure running away.
Startlingly, officials did not seem to find this plan outlandish. One NSSP researcher attached a note to the proposal that read: “This sounds theoretically possible. Might be very difficult to guide the missile into the proper place, though.” Difficult indeed.
This response reflected a Cold War-era receptiveness to the possibility that, with enough research and technological expertise, scientists might be able to harness the weather. As historian of meteorology Kristine Harper put it, “weather control efforts fit in with the postwar, Cold War-era hubris that people could gain the power to dominate nature.”
Severe storms researchers were still attempting to learn some of the most basic information about tornadoes—How do they form? How fast are their wind speeds? But some outspoken team members hypothesized to the press that, once they knew more, tornado control would be a logical future step. In 1965, for example, an Oklahoma newspaper wrote that “Eventually, when weathermen know the exact causes of a tornado, they may be able to prevent its formation, possibly by a cloud-seeding technique.”
It’s hard to blame anyone in the Great Plains for this wishful thinking, especially in 1965, when a series of tornadoes known as the Palm Sunday outbreak had devastated communities across multiple states, causing 271 fatalities, thousands of injuries, and $200 million dollars in damages (in 1965 dollars). Still, researchers were far from determining even the specifics of tornado formation, let alone how to stop one.
Many weather researchers were reluctant to embrace wide-scale weather modification. The atmosphere, they understood, was complex and there was much they still did not know about how a slight change in one area would impact weather somewhere else.