What if it was heavily raining in NYC during 9/11? Will the Towers collapse?

Nightingale

Nightingale

Let's say the hijackers still see the Twin Towers through the lower visibility and crash the planes into the towers.

If it was heavily raining in New York on 9/11, will the rains be able to help in extinguishing the fires that resulted from the impacts and prevent the heat-induced structural stress that weakened the structures and eventually resulted into the collapse of the Twin Towers?
 

urielventis

Main difference will not be in the fire, but in the fallout.
There will be a lot less ash and fine powder with asbestos/... in the air. It may lower the number of pulmonary disease due to the attack.
 

Carl Schwamberger

Might make a difference in the ability of the attackers to find New York City. Their training in navigation was minimal, and a low overcast with heavy rain might lead to a plane or two wandering out over the Atlantic, or into the Catskills. Even in clear weather it is claimed the pilot who attacked the Pentagon could not spot the White House.
 
Bucky

Bucky

The White House is too small a target to hit, especially for a poorly trained amateur. I always wondered if the Capitol building wasn't the main target. It was in the Tom Clancy book that 9/11 was based on.
 
CJD

CJD

The hijackers would probably not even bother trying on a rainy day and instead wait the weather to clear up.
 

kclcmdr

Carl Schwamberger said:
Might make a difference in the ability of the attackers to find New York City. Their training in navigation was minimal, and a low overcast with heavy rain might lead to a plane or two wandering out over the Atlantic, or into the Catskills. Even in clear weather it is claimed the pilot who attacked the Pentagon could not spot the White House.
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What was the suspected target of the fourth hijacked jetliner that crashed on its way when the passengers rushed the Cabin to avoid another loss of mass life on the ground ??
 

Arcavia

kclcmdr said:
What was the suspected target of the fourth hijacked jetliner that crashed on its way when the passengers rushed the Cabin to avoid another loss of mass life on the ground ??
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I've heard it was the Capitol building but I'm no expert
 
Not James Stockdale

Not James Stockdale

The fires in the twin towers were inside the buildings, so rain would have a negligible impact. The collapse of the towers was probably inevitable after the impacts, even though jet fuel can't melt steel beams. One big impact of rain, as others have mentioned, would be on the attackers' ability to find their targets. Another major impact would be on the dust clouds that came up after the towers collapsed. These clouds spread large amounts of hazardous materials all over Lower Manhattan and has resulted in significant impacts on the respiratory health of people, especially first responders, who were caught outside in the dust or worked in dusty areas in the following days. The cancer connection is somewhat more tenuous than the respiratory injury. Heavy, continuous rain on 9/11 would reduce the size of the initial dust cloud, clean a lot of the dust off the streets immediately, and then keep the dust (everything would be wet) down during the initial phase of firefighting and search & rescue at Ground Zero.
 

DougM

Donor
I had lunch a couple days after 9/11 with a consultant I worked with. He was an older gentleman in the Architectual / Engineering profession and was good friends back in the day with the designer of the towers. (When they were being designed) And he had firsthand knowledge of the design. He explained to me exactly how and why the towers came down the way they did.
We discussed various aspects. The greater amount of jet fuel on the more modern planes then what was designed for when the towers were being designed. Issues with “fire proofing”. The problem of a fire in general. The way the air entered the building and how it was effected by the heat of the fire and the height and how that would effect the temperature of the fire. And of course the strength of the steal. And how weak it got because of the fire. How this weakening allowed distortion of the members. How the distortion both decreased the strength and allowed displacement of members and a whole bunch of other things. By the time lunch was done I had a pile of sketches and a couple crude calculations that came to pretty much the same conclusion that was arrived at after a long investigation.

And in a nutshell the impact shattered the windows allowing a Hugh amount of air in to feed the fire. The impact also basically sandblasted the fire proofing off the structure exposing it to the fire. And the amount of fuel added to the flammable materials already on the floors effected fed by the air coming in through the shattered windows was such that as soon as the plane hit the building was doomed.
And no amount of rain is going to change that.
Added to this is that the fire was mostly in the center not out at the edges where the rain could get to it, and that the structure that failed first was farther into the center and that the outer structure being cooler held longer and the rain is going to do nothing even if it was a 500 year level storm.
The outer structure held while the inner structure failed, this is why the building looks like it imploded. If you watch the right video you will see the roof caving in in the center and an antenna staring to go down before the exterior of the building starts to move. This is because the inner structure failed first pulling in and down the outer structure. This contained the collapse. Note this is actually what it was intended to do.
So absolutely nothing would have changed as far as the collapse.
The cloud as noted is another issue, but I belief that is not what the op was asking.
 

BarbaraChandler

Banned
Rain adds weight pressure to the already weakened structures perhaps hastening tower collapse and increasing the death toll. Not to mention flooding at ground zero will greatly complicate S&R efforts.

It keeps the asbestos bearing dust down in the eventual collapse. That’s about the only advantage.
 

Mumbles

Not James Stockdale said:
The collapse of the towers was probably inevitable after the impacts, even though jet fuel can't melt steel beams.
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This particular talking point needs to die. Steel beams weren't melted and didn't need to be for the buildings to come down. What the jet fuel did is start massive office fires on multiple floors, and those fires consuming the ordinary contents of the building itself were sufficient to reduce the load carrying capacity of the already damaged structure to the point of collapse. The Lead Structural Engineer is on record as saying while they anticipated a 707 at low speed impact, what they had no way to realistically plan for was the effects of the fires after the crash.
 

Arkenfolm

The biggest effect would be if the flights in question are delayed. If American Airlines Flight 11 is delayed, then more people will be in the North Tower and thus more casualties. If United Airlines Flight 175 is delayed, then more people in the South Tower will survive and possibly the flight will be intercepted and shot down or otherwise miss its target, leaving the South Tower still standing, assuming the North Tower still collapses.

Practical Lobster said:
One other repercussion would be fewer recognizable and iconic photos and fewer photos as a whole. Might be fuel for conspiracy theorists.
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No, there would be iconic photos, but there likely wouldn't be photos or video of the North Tower being hit, since there might not be a reason to call out the FDNY and the Naudet brothers, and they might not be able to capture their famous footage. But most of the famous 9/11 photos and videos are of the aftermath of American Airlines Flight 11 hitting the North Tower, and a lot of New Yorkers would turn their cameras to the smoking North Tower if the terrorists can still guide their plane to the North Tower. This adds to the conspiracy theories, but it's like the conspiracy that the Pentagon was never hit by an aircraft.

Assuming the conditions of heavy rain don't cause the terrorists hijacking United Airlines Flight 175 to collide with either Delta Airlines Flight 2315 or Midwest Express Flight 7, then they'll still succeed in their mission and hit the South Tower, which at that point will be watched by all the cameras and news media and result in the most iconic footage of the tragedy.

Mumbles said:
This particular talking point needs to die. Steel beams weren't melted and didn't need to be for the buildings to come down. What the jet fuel did is start massive office fires on multiple floors, and those fires consuming the ordinary contents of the building itself were sufficient to reduce the load carrying capacity of the already damaged structure to the point of collapse. The Lead Structural Engineer is on record as saying while they anticipated a 707 at low speed impact, what they had no way to realistically plan for was the effects of the fires after the crash.
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Oh I agree, and so do most people who have actually done research. "Jet fuel can't melt steel beams" is/was a meme for a reason. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (B.S. in mechanical engineering), Osama bin Laden (equivalent of a B.S. in civil engineering), and some other noteworthy terrorist leaders have degrees in engineering, and certainly they know what happens if you have intense fires burning in a skyscraper.
 
NHBL

NHBL

I also seriously doubt that they would have tried on a rainy day, because the targets would be hard to find. Last minute bookings cost more, but who cares? They won't be spending it.
 

ric350

Aren’t the fasteners the structural weakness in a steel construction? Under intense heat, and bearing structural load, aren’t the bolts/rivets holding the steel members together likely to fail first?

Ric350
 

JamesHunter

Arcavius said:
I've heard it was the Capitol building but I'm no expert
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I think that's the theory but nobody was left to ask at the time, we don't seem to have caught anyone who knew and AQ didn't keep those kinds of records. Probably doesn't matter anyway as an airliner going down anywhere in central Washington is going to cause a massive death toll. I suspect it would be a case of "Whatever we can find and hit by that point," especially as by then F-16's were in the air (all be it unarmed) and would be trying to ram the jet if it had made it to Washington. They simply wouldn't have time to be picky and hopefully would have been bought down anyway.
 
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