Midland, Texas (APE) - Scientists across the ever widening "Tornado Alley" are resorting to newer, more high-tech interventions in their quest to understand and control super storms which have recently been shown to be largely centered around the lowly bacteria. Responsible for some of the most powerful and destructive tornadoes, blizzards, and now possibly hurricanes, researchers are sounding the alarm that many of these storms' bacteria are showing increasing levels of drug-resistant. The drug resistance is so severe, according to some researchers, that the ultimate strategy for antibiotic seeding of clouds to control and regulate the power of these storms may prove unrealistic.
"We've moved on from the original crude tornado probes such as "Dorothy"," stated barometric internist Stan Livingston, M.D./Ph.D. "Today we have much newer technologies such as the Pill Cam, which has allowed us to go inside of the tornado visually with both a macroscopic and microscopic view. The proliferation of bacteria within some of these most violent storms is disturbing. The hot, wet, nutrient rich environment is the perfect medium for some of these bugs. Clean and safe rainwater has rapidly become a thing of the past."
Working under a combined grant from the Bush Administration and several drug companies, Livingston and other researchers have cited proliferation of antibiotic resistant storm dwelling bacteria as a possible explanation for the perceived increase in power and destruction of storms in recent years, rather than the more commonly accepted theory of increased global warming. "Global warming does play a role," explained Livingston, "but it's more of an ancillary factor. Bacteria do much better when conditions such as heat are optimal. The more bacteria, the better able rain droplets or snowflakes are able to coalesce."
"The most disturbing aspect of our research has been the discovery of the drug-resistant bacteria," continued Livingston. "We have cultured bacteria from some of the most powerful storms and found them to be resistant to even two and three drug strategies. This summer, on two separate occasions, we were successful in the deployment of the successor to "Dorothy", "Florence", named after Florence Nightingale. "Florence" was able to deliver one half ton of one of our most powerful antibiotics, Cipro, or ciprofloxacin, directly into an F2 and an F3 tornado. The massive dose had almost no effect on the storm's intensity whatsoever."
Livingston stated that researchers are scrambling to come up with other strategies to deal with the bacterial resistance storms. "We had high hopes of possibly being able to blunt the effect of hurricanes ultimately through antibiotic cloud seeding via chaser planes, but it appears that this will ultimately be both impractical and ineffective."
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