Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize Weather

There have been many books about the history of maps, but few have addressed one of the types of maps that we consult most regularly: the weather map. Monmonier, a professor of geography at Syracuse University and author of several previous books, endeavors to remedy this deficiency and does so admirably.He goes back to the earliest days of investigating the weather, before telephone or telegraph when any weather map had to be put together days or more after the fact. But it gets done, even so, and when higher-speed communications are available, people are ready. He goes on to cover developments both technological and social: the advent of radar as a weather detection tool as well as the now-routine weather satellite views, but also how the weather is covered in the news, including the development of the newspaper weather map from the dull black-and-white diagrams that were once routine to the multicolored glory of USA Today's weather map. There's weather on television, too, and he spends time talking about both The Weather Channel's coverage with their many maps on a chroma-key background and how local stations cover the weather using the latest in technology, from doppler radar to the fancy, fly-through 3-D graphics that many of them seem to use these days.My personal preference would have been to learn more about the earliest days of the weather maps and how they were developed and less about the development of the glitzy modern weather reporting, but perhaps that is just me, and, considering the ubiquity of the latter, I can't fault its inclusion. Overall, it's a well-written, good read, and highly recommended for the weather fanatics among us (and I must include myself!).

This book uses weather maps as a central motif. It discusses issues of meteorology (although it is not really a primer on meteorology, as suggested by the Scientific American review), cartography, graphic design, and mass media. It is lightly written but well documented and intelligently illustrated. It is a great read for those who enjoy science books.