You have got to love a story like this:

Supersonic fighters could snuff out hurricanes

Russians patent shockwave storm-squelch scheme

A Russian professor at an Ohio university has applied to patent a method for snuffing out hurricanes by flying jet fighters around the eye of the storm at supersonic speeds.

Professor Arkadii Leonov and his collaborator Atanas Gagov, both of Akron Uni, actually filed their patent application "Hurricane Suppression by Supersonic Boom" last year.

There is plenty to love about this idea --

1. It's original.

2. It relies on existing technology.

3. If it works, it solves a huge existing problem.

But if it does work, I think it will ultimately fall to supersonic unmanned drones to carry out this task. I know we already send aircraft into storms for scientific observation, but something tells me that whipping around the perimeter of a hurricane at supersonic speeds opens up a whole new level of risk.

(Via FuturePundit.)