The U.S. Government once supported research into methods of hurricane modification, known as Project STORMFURY. For a couple decades NOAA and its predecessor tried to weaken hurricanes by dropping silver iodide - a substance that serves as a effective ice nuclei - into the rainbands of the storms. During the STORMFURY years scientists seeded clouds in Hurricanes Esther (1961), Beulah (1963), Debbie (1969), and Ginger (1971). The experiments took place over the open Atlantic far from land. The STORMFURY seeding targeted convective clouds just outside the hurricane's eyewall in an attempt to form a new ring of clouds that, it...