 An airplane flew along the rainbands of the hurricane , and dropped nearly 180 pounds ( 82 kilograms ) of crushed dry ice into the clouds . The crew reported " Pronounced modification of the cloud deck seeded " . It is not known if that was due to the seeding . Next , the hurricane changed direction and made landfall near Savannah , Georgia . The public blamed the seeding , and Irving Langmuir claimed that the reversal had been caused by human intervention . Cirrus was canceled , and lawsuits were threatened . Only the fact that a system in 1906 had taken a similar path , as well as evidence showing that the storm had already begun to turn when seeding began , ended the litigation . This disaster set back the cause of seeding hurricanes for eleven years . 
