Weather Books

I just finished reading a new book by H. Michael Mogil titled "Extreme Weather". Unlike many weather books which focus on a dynamic approach (highs, lows, jet streams) to explain weather this book looks at extreme weather by event type and discusses the processes and history behind them. By "extreme" I'm talking about tornadoes, ice storms, flooding, lightning, droughts and so on. The book includes stunning photographs and clear illustrations. Some of the events mentioned are as recent as this year --which for me made the book even more relevant and fun to read.
What I really found interesting about the book is the way Mogil looks at weather extremes within the context of today's global warming discussion --something in the news every day and now even more controversial due to Al Gore's announced Nobel Prize. He doesn't outright deny the existence of global warming and our impact on the environment but rather he illustrates how factors such as long-term climate changes (our coming out of a mini ice age), relatively short weather record-keeping history, the media's preoccupation with hype and sensationalism, and people's selective memory of significant events all conspire to influence our perception. This can lead some people to believe we are in an immediate "crisis". Mogil shows how the media likes to say things like "this is the heaviest snowfall in 10 years" --something which certainly sounds extreme in the short-term but in terms of long-term weather it's probably a relatively common event. He also shows how factors such as the media's incorrect use of the term "normal" (as opposed to the more correct term "average") make extremes (which are in fact a natural range of conditions) seem even more extreme and unusual. For instance, when we say the "normal" high for today is 60 degrees and the actual high reaches 80 there's a tendency for people to say "wow, something is really wrong!" Yet in fact though this book we discover that the high temperature on this day, throughout recorded history, may have ranged from 40 to 100 degrees! Thus the average figure of 60 degrees is meaningless and misleading and the figure of 80 degrees may not be as extreme as we think.

While extreme deviations from the climatic average may be rare they don't all necessarily occur because of human influence. Factors such as improved real-time TV reporting of things like as tornadoes, brush fires, and hurricanes all bring these naturally occurring events to the forefront. The book shows how recent events such as California's brush fires, hurricanes like Katrina, and the drought in the southeast aren't necessarily more intense (in a physical sense) than past "extreme" events but rather it's their impact on people which is greater as a result of where we choose to live, how we construct our homes, and how densely we are populated. This subtle point can lead people to confuse the effects of an event with the physical intensity of an event. Mogil illustrates how easy it is to claim everything is the result of global warming when in fact many of the extreme variations can be explained by other factors --many which predate the industrial revolution.

The last chapter of the book really summed things up foe me. In fact I thought it might have made a better introduction than a conclusion. While I personally believe we humans are warming the planet I agree with Mogil that the dire predictions are probably overdone. Although our study of hyper-long climate histories through techniques such as ice core drilling and fossil stratification gives us general information about average temperature, precipitation, atmospheric gas content, and plant life, these records cannot speak for individual record events such as tornadoes, floods, droughts, and heat waves --the extreme weather-- which may have occurred throughout history. For all we know the massive EF5 tornadoes we have today may pale in comparison with tornadoes that occurred 50,000 years ago. We just don't know. In short, Mogil cautions readers not to automatically attribute extremes in weather to man-made global warming and encourages them to continue seeking and evaluating new information.

After reading this book I haven't changed my mind about our need to cut down on pollution. I haven't changed my mind that we are affecting our environment in a negative way. I also haven't changed my mind about the need for our country move away from foreign oil and our seemingly endless desire to use guns to solve problems rather than our brains. I do feel however, that I am in a better position to analyze what I'm being fed by the media and to consider that my short time on this planet is just a blink of an eye in terms of geologic time and weather history. While I still plan to purchase an electric car in 2009 I no longer feel compelled to sell my house in Oklahoma under the looming threat that it will soon be under water when the polar ice caps melt!

When my colleagues and I planned the conference upon which this book was based, we wanted to make sure we would come to understand why Hurricane Floyd wreaked such devastation upon Eastern North Carolina in September of 1999 so we could better inform the public as to the causes and remedies. What we found was that many of the disastrous consequences could have been avoided. A series of freakish natural events, combined with thousands of political and individual property development decisions over a 50 year period, converted Eastern NC into a giant bathtub with many of its key drains clogged. Some have described the flooding that occured as "Biblical" in nature. And it can happen again unless community leaders show the courage to make the necessary modest and reasonable changes to their respective communities. This is a book from which scientists, politicians, agency personnel and the general public all can benefit. It is based on research in the physical, environmental, and social sciences as well as "on the ground" experiences. All net proceeds go to projects for improving our understanding of the impacts of hurricanes.

The revised edition of Dictionary of Weather & Climate offers high school and college-level collections over 2,000 cross-referenced entries defining and exploring terms used in meteorology and climatology. The previous edition appeared five years ago: this adds over 150 new entries and includes pronunciation symbols for over 800 uncommon terms.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Excellent character development, story line fast paced and thought provoking. Descriptive narrative. Would like to see more by this author.

Thank you Stephen Roos for writing this book. I had been searching for a good book to help launch a conflict-resolution though read-aloud program and this book filled my fiction requirements. I can't wait to engage my students in a lively conversation of how Kit and Phoebe should have behaved and why they think they behaved the way they did. I am sure that a wonderful revelation awaits my students as I use this book as a springboard. Thanks again.

I loved this book. And would recommend that all kids get to read this for the educational value that it holds. Great work Rachel!

Disasters happen every day -- someplace in the world an airliner crashes, a fire sweeps through a city, famine claims lives in small villages, or horrendous storms change landscapes -- all transforming lives forever.
Newspapers print thousands of inches of copy, journalists broadcast minutes and hours filled with emotional words and horrific photos or video, and the internet whisks millions of bytes documenting human pain and suffering through cyberspace.
Information overload makes it too easy to forget the individual stories of victims and victory. But survival is part of the human condition and stories of survival serve as remembrances for what has been lost and provide hope for the future.
Janet Elaine Smith has done a remarkable job in showing a heartbreaking story of one such disaster. But "The Flood of the Millennium," is not a tale of woe.
This book is a testament to ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the face of danger and hardship.
The winter of 1997 had been a record-breaking year for the residents of Grand Forks, North Dakota. The people of this town were reeling from eight blizzards -- the worst ever recorded. More than 100 inches of snow had fallen and then an ice storm disabled the city with power outages that lasted for weeks in some of the smaller outlying communities.
On April 17, 1997, the residents began preparing to face nature's fury -- but not without a fight. As a volunteer working at one of the larger evacuation shelters, Grand Forks Air Force Base, Smith skillfully recounts the stories of people who lived through the worst flood the town had ever experienced.
Written in a crisp, fresh style, Smith places the reader there in the midst of wailing sirens, resonating bullhorns, evacuations, and reports of flooding, fires, and a city suddenly hit with the irony of no water in the midst of overflowing dikes. It reads like some script from a disaster movie. But Smith doesn't stop there.
Ignoring her own personal fears of what the future might hold, she gathers stories of others, creatively weaving together emotions and personalities of people faced with uncertainty of tremendous loss -- houses, cars, personal belongings. And yet, they bond together under the efforts of numerous volunteers.
Smith shows the unselfish spirit and deep sacrifice made by those who provided care, comfort, nurturing, and solace to more than a thousand residents, many of whom had special medical needs.
She easily relates the unselfishness of people opening their homes to strangers and feeding and caring for them while meeting more than just their physical needs. The story she shares is more than just a survival story. As she says in the book, the Good Samaritan was no longer just a story in the Bible.
Even though this small book is about a very large disaster, Smith aptly focuses on the positive and does a good job in showing how humor played a major role in coping. Instead of lamenting their situations, she shows how many folks really do seek the positive. One example of this is how the people living in temporary shelters eventually decided to focus on friendships rather than watch the constant news once the coverage began repeating stories.
It's obvious that she sacrificed much to help record and keep track of those being cared for as well as filling in wherever there was a need. Yet it is the courage and sacrifice of others that speaks loudest throughout her lively narrative.
For those of us fortunate enough to have never faced the threat of losing everything, Janet Elaine Smith gives us a glimpse into that possibility. Yet her sensitive treatment of and respect for those victims turned victors allow us to see the inherent good found in those who are in need and the unlimited unselfishness that abounds in those meeting those needs.
Reviewed by Francine Biere for The Coffee Cramp Reviews

Superb, what more can I say!

As a frequent traveler, I find this book to be the most useful book I've ever bought. This book gives information on most cities worldwide one might visit, on the climate to expect for a given month. It reports not only on average highs and lows, but also average rainfall volume, amount of sunshine to expect, and degree of discomfort from heat, taking into account humidity factors. Vacationers can use it to pick a good city or island to visit for any given month, minimizing the chance they'll be bothered by rain or uncomfortable temperatures. Business travelers can use it to know what clothes to bring and whether to bring an umbrella. Don't plan a trip without consulting it!

I think most people my age -- I-m 36 -- find talk of the weather the distressing and inane babble of strangers. Talk of the weather is the kind of talk you have with people in elevators, It is the kind of talk you have with store clerks with whom you don't want to exchange a single word. Grudgingly, the talk might touch on the whether. For the most part, especially in Seattle, there isn't any whether to really talk about. Most people work within sealed, environmentally controlled structures. For many years I worked in offices and cubicles without a window. I've pretty much always worked with an office computer with a Web connection and one of the first things I usually do is bookmark the University of Washington Web came so that I can see what I think of as the real world.

I like talk of the weather.

For me this is a safe topic in which my opinion for which I say things I probably shouldn't as tactlessly as possible in just about any other subject is neutralized by the fact that no one really cares about deeply about the weather and yet they all share a superficial connection to the weather became when they leave the sealed, environmentally sealed structure of their work place they may actually see the weather. The weather determines what they can do on the weekend. The weather is always present and something everyone observes. And through the talk of weather I can safely talk to strangers and learn how observant they are and hear stories related to their lives under the sky. Talk of the weather lets me understand who I am talking to before I talk to them about something in which I am liable to say something disagreeable.

I bought Folklore of American Weather by Eric Sloane from the best bookstore in the city where I live south of Seattle, a tiny used bookstore that carries an oddly great selection of paperback books. I didn't know who Eric Sloane was, but as I bought the book the owner of the store said that Eric Sloane was known for his books on

This slim book contains a dictionary of weather folklore and a brief explanation of both
the source of the wisdom and a brief explanation of the scientific validity of the wisdom.

For instance:
Insects

When the katydid says "kate," he announced ten days till a frost. (Possible)

Kate-ee-didn't --- 87 degrees
Kate-ee-did -- 72 degrees
Kate-ee -- 65 degrees
Kate -- 58 degrees
Ka -- 55 degrees
Mute below 55 degrees

Coldness numbs all insects and first slackens their calls. When 'kate-ee-did!" is reduced to a single "Kate!" it is because of the lowering temperature. The first frost might well be near.

The book is full both cant and tiny poems that work as mnemonics to explain the operation of the world. Cobwebs on the grass are a sign of frost.

Sloane writes in the introduction to the book that European, particularly English, settles on the Eastern Seaboard brought their weather folklore to the country. But the United States, while in general similar in temperature to England experienced widely different weather patterns that often varied greatly from morning to night and from day to day. England sits in a current. The United States is a vast land-mass.

Weather (except for weather disasters) has so little impact anymore. For most of the life of this country weather and the language to understand it were essential to functioning in the physical world. There is something drifting in my mind about a problem here between a separation of signifier and referent, but I don't know. I can't help but wonder if another effect of global warming will be more attention to the weather.