Scientist's plan to end tornadoes would have 100-mile giant wall in Texas

The walls would be 100 miles long and almost 1000 feet high, designed to stop the meeting of east/west winds which some say cause tornadoes by creating an updraft. The walls would be 100 miles long and almost 1000 feet high, designed to stop the meeting of east/west winds which some say cause tornadoes by creating an updraft. Image 1 of / 21 Caption Close Scientist's plan to end tornadoes would have 100-mile giant wall in Texas 1 / 21 Back to Gallery

Imagine this: a giant wall stretching a hundred miles and almost a 1,000 feet high across southeast Texas and Louisiana.

Now imagine three of those spread throughout the South, put there the stop the tornadoes that devastate parts of the country every year.

A physicist at Temple University in Philadelphia has had this idea published once and is just about to get it in another high-profile science journal as a viable suggestion to end the threat of the twisters that regularly strike in so-called Tonado Alley.

"It certainly would work, nature already tells us it works," said professor Rongjia Tao, who wrote the paper due to be published in the International Journal for Modern Physics B.

Tao suggests the walls would act like dams, only these dams wouldn't stop water, they would stop wind.

"Last year Washington County, Illinois, was wiped out by tornadoes," Tao said. "Just 50 to 60 miles east it's also flat farmland but they never had any."

Tao suggests that the presence of a small hill acted to disperse the dangerous winds and protected that area.

There were more than 800 toradoes in the U.S. last year and Tao said almost all could be stopped with his "Great walls" acting as barriers and stopping the dangerous spiraling winds from forming.

The three walls would run east to west, one in North Dakota, one along the border between Kansas and Oklahoma, and the third in Texas and Louisiana.

It would come at a cost - $16 billion each - but would stop tornadoes forever, according to Tao.

His plan does have its critics, though, with some meteorologists indignant that tornadoes are being explained in such simple terms.

Professor Joshua Wurman of the Center for Severe Weather Research dismissed the idea.

"Everybody I know is of 100% agreement - this is a poorly conceived idea," he told BBC News.

"From what I can gather his concept of how tornadoes form is fundamentally flawed. Meteorologists cringe when they hear about 'clashing hot and cold air'. It's a lot more complicated than that," Wurman said.

Tao has yet to approach any government body with his idea, but says skeptics are wrong.