Storm

A.B.C. Whipple, the author of "Storm" was a survivor of the 1938 `Long Island Express' hurricane that caught New Englanders by surprise and "carved a swath of destruction 325 miles long, from the beach resorts of Long Island through the heart of New England to Montreal and the hinterlands of Canada." Not only is this 1982 Time-Life `Planet Earth' book a good, concise history of weather forecasting, it also contains descriptions, photographs and diagrams of some of the most fearsome hurricanes, typhoons, blizzards, and tornadoes to have plagued the 20th Century. This is one of the best introductions to meteorology I have read, and the only part that needs updating is the chapter on "Attempting to Tame the Weather." Some of the instrumentation described here never did work, e.g. TOTO (the Totable Tornado Observatory). As for attempts to modify weather, the summarization in "Storm" still holds true: "The lightning suppression program is virtually dead, hail suppression has undergone retrenchment, major efforts at hurricane modification have been delayed." The decades since this book was published have seen improvements in storm tracking, but effective weather modification is still beyond our grasp.

This book is a part of the "Planet Earth" series from Time-Life. It well-written, well organized, and well illustrated. Many of the photos are in color. The first chapter, and a succeeding one, concern hurricanes, and the explanations of hurricane dynamics are excellently explained, abetted by well designed color diagrams. The first chapter concerns the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, and is one of the better narratives I have ever read about this stupendous event. Especially interesting is the disclosure that exactly the same sort of disaster occurred in New England in 1815!!! The book also addresses tornadoes, albeit in less detail than I would have preferred, blizzards, and the not quite ordinary thunderstorm. It seems tornadoes do not lend themselves to detailed narratives very well I was very impressed with the chapter on how Norwegian scientists discovered and named the processes involving the movement of storms, air masses, and fronts. This was probably the most re-read chapter of the book. This bood will not make you a meteorologist, but it will enable a sensible understanding of the phenomena our turbulent atmosphere casts our way. Recommended highly, especially for high schooler and weather devotees