Proposals for stopping such extreme weather events before they make landfall are as common as rain every hurricane season. In 2017, officials in Florida even had to remind residents not to at Hurricane Irma.

This year may be no exception, as U.S. President Donald Trump : 鈥淲hy don鈥檛 we nuke them?鈥�

, Trump denied the report published by news site Axios calling it 鈥渞idiculous鈥� and 鈥渇ake news.鈥� 鈥淚 never said this,鈥� he tweeted.

According to the Axios source who paraphrased Trump鈥檚 private remarks, he said: 鈥淲e drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?鈥�

It鈥檚 an idea that dates back to President Dwight Eisenhower and there are plenty of reasons why, according to the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which started a 鈥溾�� webpage in response to such misconceptions. In a post addressing the idea of using nuclear weapons on a hurricane, Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center debunked the idea.

鈥淎part from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems,鈥� he wrote. 鈥淣eedless to say, this is not a good idea.鈥�

Despite the fact that we may have the ability to exert energy close to a hurricane鈥檚 power, wielding just half of that energy on the eye of the storm in the middle of the ocean is a 鈥渇ormidable鈥� thought. 鈥淏rute force interference with hurricanes doesn鈥檛 seem promising,鈥� said Landsea. 鈥淭o change a Category 5 hurricane into a Category 2 hurricane you would have to add about a half ton of air for each square meter inside the eye, or a total of a bit more than half a billion (500,000,000) tons for a 20 km radius eye. It's difficult to envision a practical way of moving that much air around.鈥�

Some have suggested attacking tropical storms before they become hurricanes, a futile task for an imaginary team Landsea jokingly dubs 鈥渢he hurricane police.鈥� There are 80 disturbances in the Atlantic basic each year, of which only five typically end of developing into hurricanes.

鈥淭here is no way to tell in advance which ones will develop,鈥� he wrote. 鈥淚f the energy released in a tropical disturbance were only 10% of that released in a hurricane, it's still a lot of power, so that the hurricane police would need to dim the whole world's lights many times a year.鈥�