The Flash stopped a tornado in one of the first Waid issues.

Batman would have a plan, unlike FEMA.

Yeah, but Batman's plan would be a horrible ill-conceived one that depends on a million little things going right, and would get activated at the wrong time and do more damage than an acutal hurricane. Today's Batman, at least. Silver Age Batman would have a simpler plan of "give Superman a phone call."

Silver Age superman could do advanced chaos mathematics in his brain and steer the thing harmlessly out to sea with precision applications of ice breath and heat vision.

Flash could construct sandbag-levees as high and wide as necessary in advance of a storm surge, at the very least. And control tornadoes.

You don't see superheroes preventing/mitigating major natural disasters as much as they used to back in the 70's and 80's.

Superman and the Flash could use their speed powers to create a pressure differential thereby disappating or redirecting the hurricane.

Storm's power level has been portrayed inconsistently. At he rmost powerful, she could stop a hurricane. Other times, not so much.

Iceman could stop a hurricane by cutting off its supply of warm water.

I'm sure the Human Torch could do something to stop a hurricane, though I don't know enough about meteorology to know exactly how that would work.

Reed Richards could whip up some sort of ray to stop a hurricane.

Didn't they give Aquaman some sort of water control powers at one point?

How fast could the Red Tornado spin?

The Adam West Batman would have an appropriate and well-labeled device in his utility belt. That is why he is the best Batman of them all.

Aquaman couldn't stop a hurricane, but Tempest (formerly Aqualad) might be able to with his water-wizard powers. Whether he'd be inclined to is a completely different story.

Phoenix could. She would just eat the earth, hurricane and all. That would fix things. That said, I don't think any superhero could stop a hurricane. I think it would be more like the Flash one...they could aid in ways that mortal FEMA supervised agencies could...rebuild levees, save gobs of people, use Aquaman's fish speak to wade into town to find and rescue people, Green Latern to create huge green rafts to float people in, etc. Batman would be ALL about the looters.

I'm treating this question as if it's for actual story purposes. It would be a bad comic if such natural disasters could be stopped, especially by only one hero. It drains all suspense out of a story. It could work in a cheesy Silver Age Superman type story, but not with current ideals of continuity.

Per the butterfly effect, one could say that any attempt to squelch such a huge phenomenon as Rita or Katrina might result in disaster elsewhere even if tried. Would saving New Orleans mean Bangladesh drowns? That a drought strikes the American farmland the next summer? Such ethical dilemmas might be interesting as a story, but not a super-hero genre one unless done as "a price of hubris" type story in an alternate universe a la the Squadron Supreme.

Thor and Storm have a lot of weather control power, but for the most part that is extremely local phenomenon. Hurricanes the size of Rita and Katrina are larger than entire states or European countries. Mythological Thor could control the weather over Scandinavia, but Marvel Thor? I don't think so.

Cosmic powered characters could do so, but their level of power makes them boring as protagonists. They are best used as window dressing or antagonists of other characters. It might make a good story for Kirby's Silver Surfer learning about humanity and showcasing his power, but it would not be good for the waterd down version we now know.

In the first Byrne X-Men when Phoenix needed to fix the star crystal or whatever it was, the entire team needed to be psychically linked and fueling their energy powers into Cyclops who could transfer them to Jean or some sort of nonsense. I'd only allow something equally convuluted to solve such a problem. Thor needs a Norn Stone to amplify his powers that Loki has hidden, but also needs the help of the Scarlet Witch to keep it under control. The FF needs to collect various fire-type heroes in order to fulfill Richards' plan. The X-Men need to team up with Alpha Flight. Etcetera. Not only would it showcase the necessity of teamwork and cooperation (a good heroic trait for readers), it would stop the problem of making any one hero too powerful.

Absent the cosmic type characters, I don't think anyone in the Marvel universe could do it. Doctor Strange might, but while he is there to battle occult threats from the Netherworld, I think Doc needs to more or less let things happen in the natural world as they are.

The only person I'd allow to do it in DC would be Green Lantern, but I'd purposefully get him off the planet at times like these. Is he is supposed to patrol 1/3600 of infinity, then he'd better spend most of his time out there. Writing a guy with the power ring has it's own challenges and opportunities.

Silver Age Superman could do it, because I assume Silver Age Superman could do just about anything. Of course, the hurricane would turn out to made of kryptonite, as everything turns out to be made of kryptonite in the Silver Age.

Morrison-era JLA Batman could do it, through some ridiculously elaborate contingency plan. Adam West Batman would just take out the hurricane with a can of Bat Hurricane Repellent. Frank Miller Batman would drive around in a tank while Robin got killed, then cradle the corpse and say "good soldier" a lot.

The Spectre could do it, of course, but he wouldn't - not in his job description. But he would avenge the deaths later on by killing the hurricane in a suitably ironic fashion.

Reed Richards could invent an anti-hurricane device, but only if he pays attention and stops poking around in the Microverse or whatever's obsessing him this week.

Green Lanterns? The general Green Lantern strategy seems to be to either (1) create a big blunt object to hit things with, (2) create a big box to put things in, or (3) create a weird device suggested by a teammate. Hitting a hurricane won't help, and it's a crapshoot whether a Green Lantern has the willpower to hold a hurricane in a box for that long, so unless Reed Richards is there to tell them how to create a weird device to shut down a hurricane - which as we know would only happen in the unlikely event of an inter-company crossover - I think Green Lanterns are probably useless here.

Moving from superheroes, Dr. Doom could take out the hurricane - but it would require eliminating all hurricanes by establishing a global network of weather-control satellites which would simultaneously ensure perfect, permanent temperate weather around the planet and the complete subjugation of mankind.

Magneto, at some point in the 90s, could probably stop a hurricane. Y'know, with magnets. It wouldn't be any weirder than most anything else he's done with magnets.

I'm hoping all the curmudgeons down in Texas have gotten way the hell away from danger zones.

"The Spectre could do it, of course, but he wouldn't - not in his job description. But he would avenge the deaths later on by killing the hurricane in a suitably ironic fashion."

I could picture the Spectre using a hurricane as an instrument of vengeance, actually. For example, if Rita laid waste to a certain ranch in Crawford.

I am sure there is a specialist on the Global Frequency who could do it. :-)

The Silver Surfer could not only stop Rita, he could zoom over to New Orleans, pump all the water back into the lake (purifying it as he did so) and then raise the city by 35 feet or so to protect it for the future.

Whether he would do so is another matter.

Pre-Byrne Superman was capable of moving the entire planet, he could handle a little thing like a hurricane without any problem. He'd just fly in circles contrary to the winds at super-speed and so dissipate its energy. The Flash could in principle work the same trick, but I don't think he'd be well enough anchored (unlike Superman, who can fly).

In the first meeting between the X-Men and Alpha Flight, Shaman conjured up a hurricane over Canada to distract Storm. It got out of his control, however. Storm was able to turn it off, but it pretty much KO'ed her.

Professor X would just mindlink with everyone in the path and make sure there was an orderly evacuation. :)

I suppose New Orleans could be saved by shrinking it and putting it into a bottle.

Firestorm once, when in late Ostrander extremely overpowered mode, fought an equally overpowered version of Typhoon who was manefesting as a Hurricane [over Pittsburgh, no less.] I don't remember if the way he won would be applicable to a more mundane superstorm, though.

Major Disaster is another guy who could steer one of these things whereever he wanted it.

At DC, Either Naiad or Red Tornado--the elementals of water and air--could presumably have stopped a hurricane.

In the X-verse, Magneto could use giant iron fan-blades to reduce the wind speed.

In the Marvel universe, Priest's Black Panther would damp the whole thing down with vibranium he happened to have stashed under the Gulf of Mexico for a completely different purpose, but only if by doing so he could thwart some previously unexpected and utterly nefarious plan of Namor's.

1. Superman - cold breath. Disappate the heat in the water, kills the hurricane.
2. Thor - He is mystical so he gets a buy
3. Any largely powerful mystical character (spectre, Dr. Strange, Dr Fate etc.)
4. Storm couldn't. Not without doing some kind of damage elsewhere. I don't know if it still in continuity, but I remember, at one time, if she did any massive weather changing, it affected another area of the globe.
5. Flash is a maybe, the problem is all the heat energy in the water, is he can disappate that, then it doesn't matter about the pressure, because even if reverses the pressure, the heat is still there.