Project Stormfury Annual Report 1969

Project STORMFURY is a joint ESSA-Navy program of scientific experiments designed to explore the structure and dynamics of tropical storms and hurricanes and their potential for modification. It was established in 1962 with the principal objective of testing a physical model of the hurricane's energy exchange by strategic seeding with silver iodide crystals. These crystals have been dispensed by Navy aircraft using Navy-developed special pyrotechnic devices. The hypothesis calls for reducing the maximum intensity of a storm or hurricane by a measurable amount. Navy and ESSA scientists and aircraft, supplemented by those of the U.S. Air Force, have cooperated in STORMFURY experimental operations since 1962 when the Project began. Until 1969, one mature hurricane (Beulah, 1963) and two series of tropical cumulus clouds (August 1963 and July-August 1965) had been experimentally seeded in the western Atlantic and Caribbean Sea. (Author).