Cloud Seeding

“I liked the rush, I liked the crunch. Never did look back at the fallout”, said Sonny.  As Hurricane Dorian strengthened and slowed over the warm Atlantic Ocean, atmospheric scientist Sonny Daye came up with a plan to divert it toward Brazil to help put out the forest fires that were ravaging the country.  Sonny heard that Trump wanted to nuke the hurricane to dissipate it before it reached Florida, but he knew that doing this would just make it radioactive.  Sonny was working on a method to manipulate the temperature, moisture, and wind inside of the hurricane, so that he could steer this storm in a different direction.  He invented these giant tubes that were filled with dry ice and cooling aerosols that would create crystalline structures in the upper atmosphere to freeze the storm.  The idea was to drop this mixture into the eye of the storm to take away its intensity.  This would also make the eye grow wider and help to collapse the storm and then it could be pivoted to a new direction.

The South American continent is rarely affected by tropical cyclones, but right now the Amazon is burning at an alarming rate as tens of thousands of fires lay waste to the world’s largest tropical rainforest.  There have been more than 74,000 wildfires across Brazil this year, up 85% over the same period in 2018, and about 40,000 of them are burning in the Amazon, so it really needs a good soaking.  Sonny is the leading expert on cloud seeding and the Twomey effect and he also spent a lot of time in Brazil researching how to prevent rain from ruining the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Sonny conducted a computer animated test and then he directed the aircraft when to launch and what direction they should follow.  After they dropped their loads, and all they could do was wait.  Then radar detected that the cloud’s water particles were getting bigger and the storm had reversed direction, but it was not heading to Brazil, it was heading back to Africa where it came from.  The news media found this to be funny and that did not bring any comfort to Sonny, as in his view he saw them as being churlish.  Florida lifted the emergency warnings and they began gathering essential supplies to be sent to the new victims of the storm.  They collected tons of rice and thousands of wax candles which should clear customs with no problem.  The revised belief was that the storm would hang off the coast for a few days before it made landfall.  When the storm finally hit, it picked up a hippopotamus with a raspberry nose and wonky whiskers and this became the front page story.

Written for Tyler M Deal 5 Words Prompt – Raspberry Found Customs Essential Rice, for Sheryl’s Daily Word Prompt – Animated, for Roger Shipp’s Daily Addictions prompt – Funny, for the Daily Spur prompt – Hang, for Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie First Line Friday hosted by Dylan, for FOWC with Fandango – Churlish, for August Monthly Writing Prompts – Wonky whiskers, for Ragtag Community – Emergency, for Sara’s Closet Full Of Notebooks Prompt – Belief, for Paula’s Three Things Challenge prompt words – Comfort Wax Hippopotamus and for Word of the Day Challenge Prompt – View.