Reviews

by

Chuck Doswell

of

Books about Tornadoes and Related Topics


Posted: 11 February 2003. Updated: 06 June 2021: Added a new review

These reviews are intended to offer the usual - my opinions - about the books reviewed. This material is copyrighted - reproduction of it in any form requires my written consent - contact me by e-mail at: cdoswell@earthlink.net


The Forgotten Storm: The Great Tri-State Tornado of 1925

Author: Wallace Akin

Publisher: Lyons Press, ISBN 1-58574-607-X, 173 pp.

This book is about the famous Tri-State tornado of 18 March 1925, obviously. The author notes that he was 2 years old and living in Murphysboro, IL when the tornado struck there. He grew up to become a geographer and says that he has written the book, in part, to keep the memory of this great event alive. Of course, from my background as a severe storms researcher for 30 years, this event's memory is alive and well, so at least within my limited circles, the stated goal for writing such a book is unnecessary. To me and my colleagues, it's as if someone wrote a book to make sure no one forgot about President Lincoln, or World War II, or the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. To say this event has been "forgotten" ignores the fact that it still is being cited in formal scientific publications.1

Of course, there are many who don't share a meteorologist's passion for severe storms, so perhaps another book about this great event is not entirely without value. I'll quit this quibbling, and turn to the the book's contents.

It's just a short book, with 173 numbered pages (fewer than that containing actual text) and a lot of the text is retelling of first-person stories of the people who lived through the event or who were involved in the aftermath. A certain amount of this is useful and interesting. Even within this short book, however, I find that the stories begin to repeat themselves. I'm reminded of a book I read recently about the great January blizzard on the Plains in 1888 (not to be confused with the other blizzard of 1888 on the East Coast in March)2 -- in that book are told the stories of numerous blizzard survivors and those who died during the event. At first, such stories are riveting, but the sameness of them eventually makes finishing the book something of a chore. Obviously, the stories of survivors mean a lot to them personally, and this is not to belittle the impact of these great events on their lives, but many facets of the survivor's tales are similar and I'm simply saying that readers may find it tiresome to read so many similar stories. At least I do. The same thing began to happen to me with this book about the Tri-State tornado.

I also found that several passages in the book were simply about the author, not the storm. It's certainly not entirely inappropriate for the author to give some background information about himself and his family in the Preface, or perhaps in the Introduction, but the book is nominally about the storm, whereas the author seems to be inserting himself into the account throughout the book rather more than I would have liked.

More disturbing to me are the numerous passages in this book where the author attempts to present scientific "facts" ... some of these are in error, a few egregiously so. Moreover, there are times when the author is perpetuating mythology about storms and tornadoes. Some of this mythology is simply the regurgitation of myths begun by those calling themselves scientists but the cited "publications" are not the refereed literature. I'll list several examples here, including the worst of them, but it will not be an exhaustive list.

  1. It's rather obvious that the author has chosen to ignore the possibility raised by Don Burgess and me3 that this tornado may not have been a single, continuous tornado. Clearly, it suits the author's purposes to do this, in order to emphasize the apparent uniqueness of the event, but I find it hard to believe he has not heard this argument, if he has read the recent book by Tom Grazulis (reviewed below). Either such an event's singularity is such that a comparable tornado has not occurred since 1925, or this event's path length is not accurate. Although I remain open to either possibility, the absence of a recurrence in more than 75 years seems to compel a certain conclusion.  [update:  having completed a reexamination of the tornado's path, I'm now more inclined to believe it was a single tornado, but doubts still exist because of the absence of information about the tornado over some long stretches in Missouri.]
  2. The author repeats the speculation, "published" by Wilson and Changnon4 that the strength and longevity of the tornado was enhanced by its near-coincidence with the center of the synoptic-scale surface low. There's no known scientific basis for such speculation, but this idea nevertheless has become part of the mythology of this event. I know of no plausible process by which a tornado (or even a supercell) could "feel" any effect as a result of being near the center of a synoptic-scale cyclone.at the surface.
  3. The author reproduces the figure shown by Wilson and Changnon, alleging to reveal the structure of the supercell thunderstorm that produced the Tri-State tornado. This figure has only vague connections to any real supercell structure known to science - the storm might have been a "high-precipitation" (HP) supercell at some point in its lifetime and so the tornado could have occurred on the leading edge of the precipitation, but most long-lived tornadic storms are of the "classic" (CL) structure, so the likelihood that this storm would be in an HP phase throughout its life is pretty slim.
  4. Either some typos crept onto p. 105, or the author's understanding of hail production is pretty bizarre. On that page, he talks about levels within the storm where temperatures are between 100 and 200 degrees Celsius!! He also doesn't seem to know that large hailstones can fall downward even in the presence of strong updrafts, simply because they have grown so large.

Overall, this book is at its best when it sticks to the presentation of first-person accounts and in dealing with the historical aspects of this large event. It is at its worst when it lapses into self-indulgence. Although some of the scientific content is acceptable, other parts are not -- naturally, a lay reader will not be able to tell the difference, which is a shame. I think the book has value simply for its presentation of historical accounts, but given its failings, I find it hard to recommend that anyone pay the price to buy it.

Rating: 1 star (out of a possible 5)

Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains

Author: Howard B. Bluestein

Publisher: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-510552-4, 180 pp.

This book is the first quasi-popular book by a practicing scientist. Prof. Bluestein is also an accomplished storm photographer and this book showcases his storm images collected over many years of storm chasing.

Unfortunately, the size of the photographic reproduction is often not as large as the images deserve, a real disappointment for those who are seeking a "coffee-table" sort of book. This seems to be the result of the book suffering from a sort of split personality, apparently seeking to be both popular and rather technical at the same time. In making the worthy attempt to serve multiple audiences, Prof. Bluestein has produced a work that's not completely suited to either. In addition to the small size of many of the storm photos, some were done in black and white, which is a real shame in some instances.  I understand the reality of cost issues, of course.

Nevertheless, it's the first of its type, and so is a book that many storm enthusiasts probably will want to purchase. If some of the lay readers find some of the passages concerned with meteorology pitched above their level, they will at least have the photographs to offset this. Clearly, an effort to educate his readers is a worthy goal, and it's certain that at least some readers will appreciate the text devoted to this goal.

Prof. Bluestein is among the best storm photographers in the world, so he presumably has used the best of his images for this book.

Rating: 2.5 stars (out of a possible 5)

The Tornado: Nature's Ultimate Windstorm

Author: Thomas P. Grazulis

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, ISBN 0-8061-3258-2, 324 pp.

In this review of Tom's book, I should point out right away that Tom is a long-time friend of mine and that I was one of the formal reviewers of the book during its progression to publication. Since I was involved at that level, my review can justifiably be said to be prejudiced. Having made this "disclaimer," however, I think my opinion is still relatively unbiased, and Tom would likely agree that I would never let mere friendship stand in the way of offering an opinion.

When Tom first discussed his book project with me, he noted that he was attempting to update and build upon the classic work by Snowden D. Flora - Tornadoes of the United States - now sadly out of print, but definitely a "cult classic" that served as an inspiration for many meteorologists, including me. Therefore, I was excited and eagerly anticipated seeing the manuscript when OU Press sent it to me for formal review. Tom has done seminal work in collecting factual information about past tornadoes and has self-published some enormous works summarizing his findings5 - a labor of many years, done with painstaking attention to minute details.

Tom is a meteorologist, although he probably can't be called a research scientist. Nevertheless, he's formed some pretty strong opinions along the path of his career - [In this regard, I'm in a position of a pot calling the kettle black, of course!] - but his opinions are at least based primarily on his long labors looking at the data he's collected over a period of several decades. Hence, his opinions are worth considering, in most instances.

This book is at its best when it focuses on the data and what they have to offer. However, Tom also has done a superb job of collecting first-person accounts that manage to be diverse, interesting, and relevant to his topics, such that I never found them tedious to plow through. Quite the contrary, in fact - his accounts add considerably to the text, just as Flora's did. I believe Tom has succeeded in capturing much of flavor of the best of Flora's book

On the other hand, the book is at its worst when discussing the science. No non-researcher can possibly have a deep understanding of how science works at the level of "cutting edge" work. Scientists are usually quite opinionated [I'm certainly no exception to this rule, as I've already admitted!], and tend to favor their own ideas, naturally, in preference to those of other scientists. This apparent antagonism is at the heart of the scientific process, necessarily involving the contention of competing ideas in the "marketplace" of scientific consensus. Although ideas can be presented in terms of diametrically opposed polar opposites, the reality is that there is a large core of current scientific consensus that underlies competing ideas. Without a thorough awareness of that consensus, scientific controversy simply cannot be understood. Tom has struggled to present the latest ideas simply because he really is not a part of the process. In no way is he alone among authors of popular books in this inability to present a clear understanding of what, after all, are still ideas in a state of flux. Generally, Tom's book succeeds more than any others in conveying the ideas of cutting edge meteorology of tornadoes and severe storms, but it still suffers from an "outsider's" perspective. This can only be resolved when some of the scientific players in the controversies write their own versions of a popular book on the subject - no such book has been written, to date. Thus, while I can probably nitpick this book on a few items, I concede that Tom has done the best job so far of expressing current science issues related to tornadoes in lay terms.

A discouraging aspect of this publication is the relatively poor quality of the photographic reproduction. Unlike the original Tornadoes of the United States (also published by OU Press but in an earlier age), in which the photographs were printed on high-quality paper as special "plates" within the text, OU Press simply printed the photos on the same relatively cheap paper as the text. This choice almost certainly was not Tom's, but probably was a cost-saving decision on the part of the publisher. It's a shame, because tornado photographs especially are a major factor in the minds of tornado enthusiasts - this choice reduces somewhat the strength of my recommendation to buy the book. It would have been better had this choice been made differently for this re-visitation of the Flora book by Tom.

Flaws notwithstanding, though, I think Tom has done an excellent job of writing a follow-up book to his inspiration example (Flora's classic book). He's succeeded, in my opinion, in most regards and so I have no doubt that tornado enthusiasts will buy and enjoy this book.

Rating: 4 stars (out of a possible 5)

In the Shadow of the Tornado

Author: Richard Bedard

Publisher: Gilco Publishing, ISBN 0-9649527-1-8, 164 pp.

Since I have had the pleasure (?) of dealing with a fair number of media types and writers of various sorts, I've developed a rather deep distrust of their sincerity. They all seem to have some sort of agenda that stands between them and their subject, such that when I read their completed works, I have trouble recognizing what I told them, and mostly cannot detect any semblance of a "ring of truth" in what they write.

In the case of this book, however, I'm pleased to see an accurate depiction on the material. For once, I can read the book and get something of the real story and the real people. If you want to know something about tornadoes in Oklahoma and the people associated with them, this is the place to start. I'm not quite so positive as the author in my assessment of certain media "meteorologists" in his presentation of the "Weather Wars" in Oklahoma City, but that's my opinion. The author's sympathetic treatment of the people with whom he interacted is certainly a refreshing change from the "Geraldo Rivera" school of character assassination for the sake of personal gain that seems to dominate reportage these days.

I liked Part I, the treatment of the April 1947 Woodward tornado, although I must point out that attributing the figure on p.37 to "Don Burgess" is a minor gaffe, since that figure appeared in a paper that Don and I co-authored2 - and which is not included in his "Selected Bibliography" for some reason. Don certainly is wholly responsible for the figure, but some readers might want to know more about it and its relation to the standard picture of the 1947 Woodward event.

Part 2, providing a short science summary and describing the Oklahoma City "Weather Wars," is not particularly outstanding, but certainly is an adequate treatment of the subject. As I've noted, my views of some of the combatants in the OKC "Weather Wars" are not as sympathetic as the author's. Disregarding that issue, the picture painted by the author is one that most of us living in the combat zone will at least recognize.

It is Part 3, talking about chasers, where I believe the author has done his best work. Highlights: an accurate and enlightening history of Neil Ward's research and tribulations, a discussion of how the "Wizard of Oz" tornado simulation was done, and an interesting history of Dave Hoadley's chasing. My only gripe is that the distinction between hobbyist chasing and scientific chasing is not really made clear, but that's only a minor gripe. Since I know many of the people mentioned, it's a pleasure to recognize their character emerging from the narrative.

All in all, I recommend buying this book if you're interested in storm chasing. This is not a "how-to" book, however. It's designed more to give interested readers some insight into chasing and I think it's been successful in that regard.

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of a possible 5)

Twister: The Science of Tornadoes and the Making of an Adventure Movie

Author: Keay Davidson

Publisher: Pocket Books, ISBN 0-671-00029-2, 202 pp.

This book's foreword lays out its goal: "Oddly, no major publisher has issued a popular nonfiction book devoted entirely to tornadoes in many years. This book aims to fill that void." I believe this book manages to succeed in that objective, and to do so with some skill. However, the success of the book is flawed by some almost inevitable aspects of any outsider's treatment, and some avoidable problems, as well. Since my name comes up several times in the book, I also feel obligated to respond to some annoying aspects of the author's treatment of the personalities in the book.


Apparently, during the time when the Mr. Davidson was in Norman doing his research prior to writing this book, I was out of the country. If he was here during VORTEX-'95, he made no effort to contact me. Instead, he apparently has built up his impressions of me through viewing a videotape of The Weather Channel Storm Chaser's Conference in 1995 and by browsing my Website pages.

I have no problem with being described as "aging" (only dead folks don't age!), or "cantankerous" (I'll wear that label with some pride!). I can even accept the notion of me as an "old grouch," and I'm flattered by being called "skinny" (!) even though that is obviously incorrect. Moreover, my facial hair (this seems to be an obsession with some reporters!) can't accurately be described as a "Burl Ives goatee" unless your eyesight is going bad. Nitpicky points? Certainly, but indicative of a certain carelessness with regard to detail.

If Mr. Davidson had interviewed me personally, I'd like to think that he would still have used at least some of the same descriptive terms. However, I have three problems with his treatment of my feelings about various topics.

  1. The journalistic style of asking questions without answering them is reminiscent of the crackpot exploitation literature re UFOs and alien visitors: "Who helped the primitive Egyptians build the pyramids?" "What mysterious purpose do the giant figures engraved on the high plains of South America serve?" "How do we explain the uniformity of the stories told by those how claim to have been abducted by aliens?" This literary device implies that the answer is so obvious that no answer is required. Had Mr. Davidson bothered to ask me, I think I could have provided an answer to "Is Doswell just another old grouch, grumbling that kids are going to hell?" (p. 144) I resent the implication that this is the source of my statements on my Website. My concern for stupid chaser behavior is that it threatens something I enjoy doing. If kids are going to hell, they're certainly not going there any faster than when I was considered a "kid." As a matter of fact, I don't believe that "kids are going to hell," so this can't possibly have influenced my opinion!
  2. Pulling statements from my Website and quoting them, however accurately, is the print media equivalent of the 5-second soundbite in the broadcast media. It completely misses the context of the remarks. It also neatly sidesteps the caveats about my essays, especially the one about my thoughts after VORTEX-'95: those thoughts have NOT been reviewed and should not be considered as scientific findings! The quotations out of that context are easily misinterpretable by nonscientists as validated results from me and/or the VORTEX project. It's a kind of intellectual dishonesty to quote from that material without including the caveats. Of course, such "reporting" is all too common these days.
  3. On p. 144, Mr. Davidson's description of my capturing the Pampa video:
    1.  

      ...ironic words coming from ... a man who, in 1995, risked his neck to record what may be history's most incredible close-up video of a tornado.

    is a grotesque caricature of the actual situation. I did not risk my neck (or any other part of my anatomy) during the Pampa event - at no point were my chase partner, Al Moller, and I in any serious danger. Had we been in danger at some point, we would've gotten the hell out of there! Further, to describe my Pampa video in these superlative terms is to flatter me merely for the sake of making his journalistic point. I'm not particularly fond of flattery in any form, but insincere flattery is its most egregious manifestation. Al's description of the chase can be found here.

Overall, I think that Mr. Davidson doesn't have Richard Bedard's flair for concise, accurate character descriptions (see my review of Richard's book In the Shadow of the Tornado, above). Although he does manage to capture a lot of Erik Rasmussen in the book, I don't get the feeling when he describes people (with the possible exception of Erik), such that I recognize those people, even though I know them. It certainly requires more words for Mr. Davidson to attempt to create reality in his verbal descriptions than Richard Bedard needed.

O.K. That vents my spleen. Now I can move on to less personal aspects of the book.


Mr. Davidson's greatest success, in my opinion, is in a concise description of the history of various aspects of severe storms research. He has managed to provide, in layman's terms, a lot of insight into this history. His research into this aspect of his subject matter has been quite successful in giving the highlights of things leading up to the present-day situation regarding chasing. This alone makes the book worth the "sticker shock" price of $14.00 for a paperback.

Unfortunately what I consider to be an inevitable consequence of his "outsider" viewpoint is that he hasn't done anywhere near as good a job with the science as he's done with the history of the science. For example, a significant fraction of the book is devoted to various aspects of the possible role of electrical activity in tornadoes. The scientific consensus is that electrical activity is not likely ever to be an important player in tornadogenesis. Although scientific truth is not determined by consensus, there are good scientific reasons for consigning electricity to being a bit player in the drama of tornadoes. Historical considerations demand that some attention be devoted to the topic, certainly. The electrical "connection" [pun intended <):-)] has been proposed several times but, in my opinion, the bulk of the attention on this aspect of tornadic storms is misplaced. There's no scientific basis for believing that electromagnetic processes play any important role in tornado formation.6

Another example of too much attention paid to a sideshow is the chapter on tornado modification.7 This is another bit player in the drama, and it will continue to be that way for many years to come, barring some unanticipated breakthrough. This is an interesting topic only to a fringe element within the profession and to a large number of crackpots, if my e-mail is any indication. The less said about this issue, the better, in my view of things.

As an outsider, Mr. Davidson has managed to give a generally balanced view of the controversies he's written about, which is a step in the right direction at least, but the scientific content of the book is rather less than what I'd hoped to see. The author has had difficulty in sifting the bugs out of the flour simply because he's not a scientist himself.

I think the emotional treatment in this book of the impact of the 1984 Barneveld event is actually a useful contribution. It does us all some good to consider the real impact of our favorite atmospheric phenomenon on real people! In this book, as opposed to the NOVA treatment of the same event on PBS several years back, which got carried away in terms of it dominating the presentation, I think this chapter is done pretty well.

From a scientific viewpoint, the speculations about the impact of global warming are way out of place in the book. At most, this topic (in a book that is, after all, about tornadoes) deserves to be relegated to a few sentences at most, perhaps in a footnote or an afterword, or whatever. Speculations about the impact of global warming on tornadoes are not very useful in a presentation on tornadoes to lay readers.

My final remarks reflect more of a personal perspective, again. This book is at least as good as most of the flood of material on the subject, but it looks to me to be another chance to "cash in" on the wave of popular interest in tornadoes triggered by "Twister." Mr.Davidson clearly is a good writer but he's just as clearly not going to stay in the tornado game for the long haul. He came in, did his research over some fixed period, is getting his royalties, and then he'll be on his way to the next hot scientific topic (perhaps one determined by next year's summer movie releases?). For those of us in the game for life, such journalistic "carpetbaggers" are a bothersome aspect of "Twister's" popularity.

Overall, I can recommend buying this book, but not with a great deal of enthusiasm.

Rating: 2.5 stars (out of a possible 5)

Storm Chaser: In Pursuit of Untamed Skies

Author: Warren Faidley

Publisher: The Weather Channel, ISBN 1-888763-00-0, 182 pp.

This book is unabashedly a book about Warren Faidley and his photography, not tornadoes. Nevertheless, given the growth of interest in storm chasing, it's worth offering my comments here.

I have to say that I've known Warren for a number of years. At the beginning, we had a friendly relationship, but Warren's personality was transformed by his choice to be a "full-time storm chaser," to the point where his livelihood depends on being able to market himself and his images. He's forced to engage in self-promotion, of course, and any hint at criticism is viewed as a threat to his livelihood, engendering overreactions that have occasionally been bizarre. The book itself offers a short history of the evolution of his career, from his personal perspective. Its self-serving character is obvious. There certainly is nothing inherently wrong about pursuing the challenging goals he's set for himself and I've definitely never wished him ill along this path (or envied his choice to follow it), but it's evident that Warren has become rather prickly about any criticism as a result. He's threatened lawsuits aimed at friends of mine at various times and generally become so touchy about his work that I might even be risking his ire (and a lawsuit of my very own) just by posting this review! I'm saddened to see what has happened to Warren and the extent to which his commitment to a worthy goal has alienated a lot of his former friends, including me.

There can be no doubt, and never has been, that Warren is an excellent photographer, and his lightning photography long has been among the best anywhere. Many of his images that appear in this work, which is mostly a "coffee table" book, are certainly among the best examples of storm photography. The quality of the image reproduction is, thankfully, excellent -- a wise choice was the use of high-quality, heavy paper for the pages.

If you're a Warren Faidley "fan," the book's focus on Warren as the subject is fine and this book's for you. If you're interested in learning more about tornadoes and storm chasing, however, the content of the book is pretty thin. The storm chasing Glossary is a strange one - including such terms as "Lazbuddie event" that apparently are unique to Warren and wouldn't be encountered by most readers, unless they sought out an opportunity to meet Warren personally. There's not a whole lot of substance here, beyond what appears to be melodramatic accounts of a few of Warren's storm chasing adventures. Overall, the images are probably the best part of this book and it can only be a recommended purchase if Warren has succeeded in convincing you that he's the world's greatest storm chaser, or if you just want some excellent storm images on your coffee table.

Rating: 1.5 stars (out of a possible 5) 

Scanning the Skies: A History of Tornado Forecasting

Author: Marlene Bradford

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, ISBN 0-8061-3302-3, 220 pp.

This book takes on a challenging task -- to trace the history of tornado forecasting (and implicitly, tornado research, as well). The author is an admitted "tornado enthusiast" and she clearly has done a lot of research to write this extensive treatise and been assisted by some of the participants in the tornado forecasting (and research) field.

The author is, and has remained, an "outsider" with respect to the field of tornado forecasting and research, however. Therefore, she depended on her sources for her understanding of the historical development of tornado forecasting (and research) that emerged from her research. Histories are mostly written by historians, not the participants in the historical events. One obvious reason for this is that the participants are too busy making that history to document its details. There's no doubt that Ms. Bradford has done those of us in this field a major service by writing this book and assembling many factual details associated with that history.

As I see it, one major problem with this account of that history exists, however. The picture that emerges from reading this book is not consistent with my picture of that history. I've known or at least met a significant fraction of the participants in this historical adventure, and my impression of this book is that I don't recognize the real people behind the photographs and the words. In fact, the characters of the participants don't come through in this work at all. Rather, the participants are unrecognizable, flat "cardboard cut-out" representations of the real people. It can be argued that this book is supposed to be the history of tornado forecasting, not the tornado forecasters -- but I find it difficult to separate the forecasters from the forecasting. Knowing these people is an important part of understanding why this field has developed the way it has. Being a participant for 30+ years myself, I believe a history of events without a substantial effort to understand and portrary the people who created that history is ultimately unsatisfying. Moreover, although Ms. Bradford apparently did a lot of research and interviewing, her sample of the participants is terribly inadequate and so reflects the impressions of a few key contributors rather than a truly representative sample.

On the infrequent occasions that participants attempt to create a history of the events in which they contributed, those attempts are often flawed by the tendency for those accounts to be self-serving. Nevertheless, I would argue that a reasonably accurate picture of any historical event or development cannot emerge without having the benefit of a number of different perspectives. No single perspective can ever capture that history. Nor can a limited sample. The history of this field, as written by me, or Bob Miller, or Al Pearson, or Joe Galway, or Don House, or Bob Maddox, or Ed Kessler, or Joe Schaefer, or Steve Weiss, or Howie Bluestein, or Ernie Fawbush, or Clayton van Thullenar, or Chester Newton, or -- well, by any of a myriad of participants -- would always be unique. Every individual sees things differently, and perhaps if we had historical accounts from all these people, certain common threads would emerge whereas, at the same time, other aspects of the history would be contentious. Only after reading many such histories and seeking documentation of the events as described by the participants could a detailed and reasonably accurate understanding of that history emerge. And that history's perspective would be tainted by the biases that the historian brought to the process, so we would need many historians to do the research and many of the participants to record their memories.

However, most of the participants are not going to document their viewpoints of this history, and not many "outsider" historians are going to tackle this project. The history of tornado forecasting is nowhere near as interesting as, say, the Civil War, to most Americans. Whereas there is a plethora of books about the Civil War, including many memoirs written by the participants, tornado forecasting (and research) is never going to receive even one percent of the attention paid to the Civil War. Ms. Bradford's effort, whatever one might think of it, is the only book entirely devoted to this historical topic, to date, and may remain so for a long time to come. The participants will continue to die and history will never benefit from whatever impressions one might obtain from meeting them and hearing them talk about their views of that history.

This history is exciting to only a few of us, and we should be grateful that this book has been written. My only suggestion to its readers is that they should focus on Ms. Bradford's factual informaton and regard the account of that history otherwise as potentially flawed by the biases in her sample of interviewees and by her inability as an outsider to have a proper grasp of the developments in the field. Frankly, it bothers me that so many of my colleagues are uninterested in why this field has evolved the way it has. When we're ignorant of our history, we're probably condemned to making many of the same mistakes over and over again. This book has presented a picture of the development of tornado forecasting in a way that sheds relatively little light on the issues and blind alleys of the recent past. Its presentation of events prior to the 1960s is a bit more balanced by revealing some of the contentious topics of that age. But even so, her sources are so limited, it's clear that her understanding of historical events was dominated by single individuals -- for example, the rise and fall of the fortunes of J. P. Finley, and the choice to ban the word "tornado" by the Weather Bureau (Here, Ms. Bradford benefitted from the historical work by Joe Galway.) -- or the evolution of SELS from the publicity associated with the Air Force severe weather forecast team (Here, Ms. Bradford took her cue from Bob Miller's historical memoirs).

Finally, it's disturbing that the book's dust jacket has a fake tornado photograph on its cover! The "tornado" was added to a photograph of a supercell storm ... its appearance right at the end of the road in the foreground is just way too "artsy" to be real and I believe I've seen this very photograph of the cloud sans the tornado. This is certainly not the author's fault, but it's a flaw that adds to my reservations about the book.

Rating: 2.5 stars (out of a possible 5)

Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America

Author: Mark Svenvold

Publisher: Henry Holt, ISBN 0-8050-7646-8, 289 pp.

This book is the product of another "carpetbagger" - someone migrating temporarily into the world of storm chasing, doing his research, putting down his thoughts on what he's seen, and then packing his bags, off onto some new topic to write about and sell yet another book. Mark Svenvold is, like Keay Davidson, a professional writer and a reasonably good one, at that (albeit, with a love for the occasional word that will send some readers off to their dictionaries). He had the benefit of an extended relationship with my friend, Matt Biddle, who is the obvious "star" of this book. Many of the book's characters are friends, colleagues, or acquaintances of mine - a not unexpected result, given the nominal topic. For the most part, Mr. Svenvold has been reasonably accurate in portraying at least the superficial aspects of these characters. Unlike Matt Biddle's, however, most of his characterizations are uniformly confined to the superficial. He did seem to find certain fringe characters compelling enough to delve into some details - for example: Sean Casey of IMAX and "Bushrag" fame with his absurd "Tornado Intercept Vehicle" and Steve Green, who seems to have some vague connection with NASCAR, with his different but equally absurd "Tornado Attack" vehicle - neither of which are known to me, personally. Some others (e.g., Warren Faidley, Shane Adams, and a few others) get some extended treatment. While Mr. Svenvold seems overtly sympathetic to some of the "fringe element" chasers, I got from him an overriding feeling of his thinly-veiled contempt for most of the characters, except perhaps for Matt Biddle and a select few.

Mr. Svenvold seems to be unable to establish a real focus for this book. Nominally, he claims it was motivated by a scary storm experience while in a motel in El Reno, OK, but this doesn't seem to be much of a thread to tie together the disparate parts of the book. Like many outsiders, he seems to be driven by a need to understand storm chasers - a need that often drives the media when they interview us. Within the book, with Matt Biddle's help, Mr. Svenvold has manged to winkle out many of the strange and even contradictory aspects of storm chasers, including our penchant for what he refers to as MOPE (minimal optimism, pessimistically engaged), and the widespread "geekiness" of chasers. As an outsider, of course, he remains mystified by chaser jargon and the technical aspects of the storm chase process and seems to be expressing some frustration (and contempt) about his inevitable exclusion from the technical conversations.

Where he goes seriously astray in this book, in my opinion, is his marked tendency to wander off-topic, especially into abstract and obscure philosophical musings about things that have little or nothing to do with storm chasing - to provide only a few abbreviated examples:

p.30: In fact and in myth, the weather and the universe are rooted in 'that old confusion,' as a common prayer book from the 16th century describes it with uncommon accuracy, 'wherein without order, without fashion, confusedly lay the discordant seeds of things.' Hesiod's Theogeny, which predates the book of Genesis, describes and gives a name to this first early state: Chaos ...

p.90: The disturbing tremors in Church's work made themselves most strongly felt in paintings such as Twilight in the Wilderness, a moody piece dominated by an American sky. As the United States pitched headlong toward a civil war, the painting seemed to pose, without answering, a monumental question ...

p.92: The sublime is an 'emotional response,' as the classics scholar Glenn W. Most defines it, 'combining in some way joy, terror, and exaltation, to something that seems so entirely to transcend either our own, or else all human capabilities, that it overwhelms our normal petty instincts for self-preservation and self-aggrandizement, and instead fills us with a sense of exaltation." As a category of emotional experience, the sublime was a late refinement in human history, attributed to Dyonysius Longinus, about whom nothing is known.

The book is liberally laced with such diversions (also including global climate change, religion, and various American culture topics), often going on and on for many pages, apparently advertising the author's substantial scholarly background work, but serving mostly to motivate me to skip lightly through this book. For someone interested in storm chasers, this predominantly dark vision of the philosophical issues underlying storm chasing is rather more pretentious than illuminating.

I think the book will sell and it does contain elements that offer some limited insight into storm chasing (e.g. "extreme sitting" - p. 108, or "extreme waiting" - p. 132), but it's similar to Mr. Davidson's efforts - it fails to provide much more than superficial insight into either storms or storm chasing. There seems to be a trend among writers to try to psychoanalyze chasers, and this book is no exception. This is an apparently necessary result of a book written by an outsider who views chasing as essentially crazy activity. Who knows what history will say about storm chasers? Is storm chasing simply a temporary phenomenon resulting from the concatenation of cheap gasoline (see Ch. 11) and extensive highways with a culture dominated by selfishness and "catastrophilia" (see Ch. 4 for Svenvold's explanation of this term he has coined)? Perhaps, but in my view, chasers always have been a diverse group and trying to "explain" them collectively by parading a set of individual characters in front of the reader, as Mr. Svenvold does, is not likely ever to be successful at helping non-chasers grasp what chasing is about.

Rating: 1.5 stars (out of a possible 5)

Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado

Author: Nancy Mathis

Publisher: Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-0-7432-8053-2, 237 pp.

This is another "outsider' work, and so my expectations were relatively low. However, for the most part, the author has succeeded in getting many of the details more or less right, evidently as a result of extensive research on her part. One notably absent component in the edition that I saw was an index. By seeing an early edition, perhaps this has been (or will be) corrected in later versions.

The book alternates in a somewhat erratic fashion between anecdotes about people who have had tornado experiences and some narrative that could be seen as an attempt to tell a story about the events of 3 May 1999 and the science behind those events, as well as several other noteworthy tornado events. From a pure storytelling viewpoint, I find the erratic alternation of content somewhat distracting. I think the book would have been improved by a more organized approach, based on the major themes - as written, I'm not sure even how to describe those themes. In her Introduction, the author says

This book is the life story of one tornado on one day and its consequences - not just any tornado, but the most powerful tornado to strike a metropolitan area. It is the life story of a tornado researcher and his legacy - not just any researcher, but the most brilliant meteorological detective of the twentieth century. And it is the story of the lives touched by such a harsh hand on May 3, 1999.

The first two sentences I consider rather hyperbolic, but close enough to reality that the arguable top rankings are at least plausible. However, I find the content at times to depart significantly from this summary. The stories of several tornadoes are told. The stories of several researchers are given some attention. Hence, the content seems rather more diverse than this introduction suggests. The telling of these diverse stories, including accounts of lives touched by several other tornadoes besides that of 3 May 1999, underscores what I see as something of a lack of focus in the writing.

A meteorologist reader will find some content that is inconsistent with an accurate description of the science. For example, on p.29 is the passage:

The upper levels of the dryline act like a lid on a teakettle, topping the warm, mois air until the air mass becomes so warm and so humid that it no longer can be held back. It continually jabs until the dryline weakens.

This is a pretty poor and even misleading description of the process I believe she's trying to describe. And anyone knowing the real story of Gary England's "ambush" of Ken Crawford in Clinton, OK would find the account she gives on p.90 to be rather misleading, at best. Her account of it is in no way indicative of Gary England's venality during that sorry episode. Fortunately, she balances that with a proper tribute to Ken's contributions via the Oklahoma Mesonet. She also repeats the myth (p.43) that the synoptic patterns associated with the two separate tornadoes that hit Tinker AFB in March of 1948 were essentially identical - this myth has been dispelled by Maddox and Crisp.8 I could cite additional problematic examples, but that might leave the impression that I think the book is laced with errors.

On the contrary, for the most part, the book manages to provide a great deal of interesting information, such as details about the life of Ted Fujita. This evidently is the result of many long hours of research and interviews. If she's failed to understand much of the science sufficiently well to express it correctly in her own words, this is understandable - and forgiveable. Further, the book is far from the most egregious example of botched science writing on tornadoes I've seen. Despite its flaws, the book is engaging and informative. On the whole, I commend it to those interested in stories about tornadoes and the people associated with their forecasting and research. The author has managed to create "pen portraits" for the characters she's written about, many of whom I know (including myself) that have the ring of truth.

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of a possible 5)

Adventures in Tornado Alley (The Storm Chasers)

Authors: Mike Hollingshead, Eric Nguyen, and (sort of) Chuck Doswell

Publisher: Thames and Hudson, ISBN 978-0-500-51404-7, 187 pp.

No doubt it's potentially a concern about my impartiality that I would review a book that I had some role in writing. However, the real authors of the book are Mike Hollingshead and the late Eric Nguyen. As indicated on my website regarding Eric, I was asked to write an introduction and to author a section about the science of the storms that Mike and Eric so beautifully documented in this book - that request came before Eric's passing. Thus, although I'm a sort of author, I'm really only a bit player. The real subject is the images from these two young storm chaser-photographers. If you like storm images, the contents of this book will definitely feed your addiction to the pageantry of the skies during severe convective storms. I fully admit to being partial to the work of these young men. Eric's recent death adds a special poignancy to the legacy of beautiful images he leaves behind. This book is something of which I'm confident he would be proud, and justifiably so. He had many gifts and his photographic talent is but one of many. His co-author, Mike Hollingshead, also has the special gift of being able to find the right place to be to capture spectacular photographs. Together, they've created a very special book.

The authors have managed to convey their excitement and the thrills of the dedicated storm chaser via their textual descriptions of the events depicted in the book. Of course, only a small fraction of the total storm chasing experience comes through - these are their highlights, after all. The more typical hours and days of frustration and failure are only touched upon lightly in their descriptions. This is at most a minor shortcoming. Since the book is about the special experiences of these young men, it's not necessary to be completely forthcoming about the realities of storm chasing.

My suspicion is that buyers of this book will be more interested in the images than they will be in the text (especially my contributed text). If so, they'll definitely get their money's worth from this book. The quality of the printed images seems quite good, indeed, although the overall size is smaller than the images deserve. Perhaps my only reservation about this book in its totality is that it's so focused on the compelling and spectacular images that the personalities and motivations of the authors are pushed into the background a bit. These are interesting people, but ... ultimately, the book is about the storms, not about them, which is the way I believe it should be. Hence, this is also only a minor shortcoming. The English spellings, as opposed to typical American spellings, are a bit of a distraction for USA readers, but this is also trivial.

As noted at the start of this review, it seems something of a conflict of interest for me to recommend this book. However, rest assured, I have no pecuniary interest in the sales of the book, so its success or failure with respect to sales will have no impact on me personally. I do, in fact, recommend this book to storm chasers, as well as to those seeking to understand why some of us are motivated to engage in this apparently weird behavior. Seeing the images in this book will help anyone understand what the attraction is all about. If you buy it, I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I have.

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of a possible 5)

Extreme Weather (Understanding the Science of Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Floods, Heat Waves, Snow Storms, Global Warming and Other Atmospheric Disturbances)

Author: H. Michael Mogil

Publisher: Black Dog and Leventhal, ISBN 978-1579127435, 304 pp.

Although the title of the book suggests that the range of topics includes far more than tornadoes, the title also suggests that someone interested in the science of tornadoes might want to consider this book. Unfortunately, the book's delivery of the content promised in its title is quite limited. I've known Mike for many years, and it's true that he's entitled to claim he's a meteorologist, but I don't believe that he can claim legitimately to be a scientist on the cutting edge of any part of atmospheric science. It's not at all obvious that Mr. Mogil is a recognized authority on the science of any of the atmospheric phenomena covered in this book, so I went into this with some serious doubts about his capability to explain the science properly. My concerns, sadly, were valid.

When scientists speak and write about their science, it's a common problem that they become so intensely focused on their words and phrasing that most laypeople find their presentations boring - scientists use words with considerable caution to avoid misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and confusion over their intended meaning. Mr. Mogil's presentation might be breezy enough to be palatable to lay readers, but the reality of this book is that it contains precious little of what I consider as meaningful science. Instead, the book's content is limited mostly to a rather self-centered presentation of Mr. Mogil's opinions about atmospheric science, including his admitted skepticism regarding global warming, along with a vast collection of what amounts to weather trivia. The use of sidebars for many of these presentations is a popular thing these days, but if the goal is to present the science (as the title promises), there needs to be more in-depth science presented rather than producing a blizzard of tidbits the author considers to be interesting. Right from the start, the book is rife with bad editing, misstatements, misconceptions, outright errors in the science, as well as potentially confusing presentations. Most of these are rather minor - there's a core of at least more or less correct information herein but it's liberally sprinkled with problematic content to such an extent that a lay reader would probably come away with a lot of erroneous "understanding" from a thorough reading of the book.

Let me offer some specific examples but I can by no means even begin to mention them all. On many pages of the text, I could find two or more examples on a single page.

I could go on at great length, but I believe this suffices to validate my assertions about the content. None of these individually is particularly serious, but the accumulated effect throughout the book is devastating. As if this isn't bad enough, the book is characterized by a theme seeking to discredit the whole notion of global warming, despite Mr. Mogil's lack of qualifications as a global climate change scientist. His is not a balanced presentation at all, and actually represents a major reason not to invest in this book as a means of learning about the issues in atmospheric science. Even if all the relatively minor problems I found were to be repaired, the diatribe on global warming would remain as a major obstacle for me to see this work in a favorable light. Dr. Harold Brooks has reviewed this book for EOS (the news magazine of the American Geophysical Union) ... see EOS, volume 89, number 28 (08 July 2008) for his review, which focuses on Mr. Mogil's misrepresentations regarding gobal climate change science.

I simply can't recommend this book for any reader seriously interested in learning about extreme weather phenomena and the science that has developed about them. There are many nice photographs in the book, and that might represent the only justification I can see for buying it.

Rating: 0.5 stars (out of a possible 5)

Authors of the Storm: Meteorologists and the Culture of Prediction

Author: Gary Alan Fine

Publisher: Univ. of Chicago Press, 294 pp, ISBN-13: 978-0-226-24953-7 (paper)

This is not a book exclusively about tornadoes, but tornadoes and severe weather figure prominently herein. It's yet another book written by an "outsider" to meteorology - someone who writes about a topic without ever having done it him/herself. In this case, this particular outsider brings his own brand of expertise to the topic of weather forecasting. His focus, as a sociology professor, is on the "culture" of weather forecasting. Curiously, from where I sit, he got a lot of things right about that culture, despite having spent time only at a few places in the National Weather Service (NWS). Being a professor at Northwestern University, it was probably inevitable that he would spend the most time at the Chicago office. The Chicago office is, as he divined correctly, something of an anomaly in the NWS, so his experiences there would not necessarily be very representative of the whole NWS. He also spent some time at other offices, including the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) and apparently gained insight via the process.

Thus, despite his outsider status and having experienced only a small part of the diverse cultures within the NWS, the author has grasped several important themes in forecast meteorology: the private vs. public sector controversy, the oscillation over time in the NWS bureaucratic style between centralization and dispersal of authority, the odd retention of regional offices in between the national headquarters and the field, the curious role for science in operational forecasts, the hierarchical, quasi-military character of the General Kelly era as head of the NWS, and so on. The one glaring misunderstanding I see is that he really didn’t learn much about meteorological science and how the academic/research community operates within this field. But that’s both understandable and not a particularly troublesome omission.

I also find it amusing that Dr. Friday, as head of the NWS, was characterized as a "scientist" rather than a military officer - Dr. Friday retired as a bird colonel in Air Force before he was the Associate Administrator for the NWS (i.e., the Director). The fact that Joe Friday was not the bullying, dictatorial ex-soldier wearing his rank as a badge of authority that Gen. Kelly was could be seen as him being more of a scientist than a military officer. [Joe Friday didn’t insist on his subordinates using the title “colonel”, for instance, whereas Gen. Kelly and Adm. Lautenbacher did choose to retain their military titles.]

Overall, if someone reads this with the intent of gaining insight into how the National Weather Service operates, then they will be getting what I believe to be a mostly accurate picture. As such, I can recommend this book for those wishing to learn about the "culture" of NWS weather forecasters. The book offers nothing substantive about forecasters in other organizations (public or private), however. I'm confident those other organizations have some cultural characteristics in common with the NWS, but I doubt they would mirror the NWS culture precisely.

Rating: 4.0 stars (out of a possible 5)

Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather

Author: Mike Smith

Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press, ISBN 978-1-60832-034-9, 286 pp.

Mike Smith is a successful private sector meteorologist and business entrepreneur, who started his own weather company, Weatherdata (recently has been bought out by Accuweather, a giant weather business that has its origins with Joel Meyers and Penn. State University). There can be no doubt of Mike’s mastery of the private sector and it shows throughout the book. This is a rare example of an "insider" writing a book in this field. All in all, it turns out there's considerable worthwhile content in the book. However, it's rather hyperbolic to subtitle it as "the true story of how science tamed the weather" - I would subtitle it as "one man’s vision of how the application of science to weather warnings has made great strides in mitigating the effects of severe weather". Not so short and catchy but closer to reality, methinks. The science of meteorology is pretty far from having "tamed" the weather! To give Mike the benefit of the doubt, perhaps this subtitle was imposed on Mike by his editor.

I was prepared to find fault with this book, and I have. But I also find that Mike has articulated one concept very well - perhaps better than anyone else: the hidden value of weather services. He makes a very good case for the effectiveness of all weather services, public and private, in terms of how they return value far in excess of whatever has been invested in them. On this score, Mike deserves considerable credit for making this point in a compelling way. He also has told his version of the story of Hurricane Katrina and the city of New Orleans in unforgiving terms - a story that needed to be told openly and honestly.

Where this book lets me down is its unrelenting focus on Mike himself, his accomplishments and his successes. Of course, being successful in the private sector requires promotion, and Mike's book is, to a considerable extent, a paean to himself and his company. I expected little else, so I admit to being surprised at the book's redeeming value beyond promoting Mike and his company.

Mike likes to consider himself a scientist, although it's pretty obvious that Mike hasn't contributed anything of substance to the science of severe storms via refereed journal publications. Because he's a meteorologist but not truly a scientist, his understanding of the history of science is not very comprehensive. He really hasn't participated directly in the growth of meteorological science, but has the ability to apply its results, no doubt. Various people beside himself come in for praise in Mike's book - in particular, some of Mike's friends: the late Ted Fujita, the late Bob Miller, and Don Burgess, to name three. Although Mike’s descriptions of them and their deeds contain no glaring errors, they strike me as rather narrow interpretations of the history in which those people have participated. Many other scientists contributed to the science attributed to these efforts and are not mentioned at all. Mike apparently was an early storm chaser but, by reading this book, it's possible to come away with the impression that he was a pioneer of major proportions in applying chasing to science, which I believe to be something of an exaggeration of his role.

One problem I found was the perpetuation of what I consider the myth of Ted Fujita's "persecution" regarding the concept of microbursts. It's my impression that Ted's feelings of persecution were largely a product of Ted's extreme sensitivity to any scientific criticism, valid or not. Ted defended his ideas as if they were his children and not just the products of a creative, innovative, but decidedly human mind, capable of error. I have nothing but the highest regard for Ted Fujita and his contributions but the man I knew was not infallible or without flaws.

That brings up another thread that permeates this book: the persistent theme of the negative impact of Federal agency bureaucracy on meteorology. I have some reasons to agree with Mike about some aspects of this (for example, the current FAA policy of not disseminating weather warnings from the NWS within the FAA), but my reaction to the tone of the book vis-à-vis this topic is (a) that it reads like a David-Goliath myth, with Mike (and his selected friends) as David and (b) the many good aspects of government involvement in meteorology are given short shrift here. In this book, Mike portrays himself as a knight in shining armor ("The Paul Revere of Grandview High"!!?) tilting against the windmills of bureaucratic stupidity - more self-promotion, as I see it. Government bureaucrats are easy targets for the private sector as they are not able to fight back in their official capacity.

I found a few technical errors in the book [e.g., the canard that low-level convergence creates upward motion - p. 39; or continuing to perpetuate the misconception that the second Tinker Air Force Base tornado of 1948 occurred in a weather situation exhibiting "great similarity" to that of the first such tornado case - p. 57ff (see also my review of the book by Nancy Mathis, above)]. An editorial error that should have been caught is that the Union City tornado of 1973 is mentioned (p. 111) before it is described (p. 192). This work is neither a science book nor even a history book (which it claims to be). Its primary focus is selling Mike and his company. The book's value would be enhanced if it had an index and a bibliography (which I expected, given the author's claim to be offering historical perspective). It's an easy book to read and contains useful insights and some interesting historical accounts through Mike's eyes, but I can't recommend it for those seeking scientific understanding or comprehensive historical information. The book's greatest virtue is its compelling arguments on behalf of the enormous value of weather forecasts in saving lives and even property in potentially disastrous weather situations.

Rating: 2.5 stars (out of a possible 5)

Death Rides the Sky:  The Story of the 1925 Tri-State Tornado

Author:  Angela Mason

Publisher:  Black Oak Media, ISBN-13: 978-1-61876-001-2,

I was contacted by the author shortly before she completed this book, asking for information about the Tri-State Tornado Reanalysis Project with which I'm associated, having recently heard about our work.  She wanted to have our latest results but I didn't want to share very much about our findings until we have submitted them for formal publication.  What appears in her book regarding our project is only the tip of an iceberg, but working on the project gives me a deeper understanding of the level of effort that her research upon which this book is based really entails.  I admire very much that she did everything described herein essentially on her own and without any financial support.  Her illness (read the Foreword) has delayed publication by several years, unfortunately.  I'm pleased to see this book hit the streets.

Ms. Mason is yet another outsider to the field of meteorology who has authored a book about tornadoes.  But I don't consider her to be another "carpetbagger" - this was a work requiring literally years of hard effort, rather than zooming in and then zooming out with equal alacrity.  Her lack of technical meteorological knowledge is probably the most significant problem with the book.  I'll have more to say about that below.  The book was easy for me to read over a weekend while I was on travel (time spent in airports can be put to good use!), and it's quite well-written.  Most of the book provides anecdotes derived from her interviews with living participants in the event, or their immediate families.  This is the most valuable component of the book, in my opinion.  The tornado tales are poignant, and heartbreakingly tragic in many cases.  I've come to expect this in association with tornadoes, so this is hardly surprising.  She has provided a great deal of detail, and in the case of the first victim of the tornado (Sam Flowers), some obvious artistic license with the story.  I don't have a problem with that artistic license, as it serves to put a human face on someone who is otherwise just a statistic.  It's important for us to recognize that tornado victims are not mere statistics, after all.  They are real humans and their stories are worth telling, even if the details have to imagined rather than uncovered.

Some time ago, I read about the 1888 blizzard on the Great Plains - the so-called "Children's Blizzard" - in a book by that name written by David Laskin.  Although the tales of that story also are both poignant and tragic, I found the accounts therein somewhat tedious and repetitive.  After a while, it was tough to read on to the end, as the stories had a monotonous similarity   Ms. Mason's narrative, on the other hand, is neither tedious nor repetitive and, I believe, very much interesting reading.  The biggest problems with the book are the technical errors she has included regarding the meteorology, through no particular fault of her own.  For example, her discussion on p. 201 of the possibility that the tornado was an F6 when it hit Griffin, IN, is simply not tenable (see Item B.11.c here for some discussion).  On p. 257, the tornado is erroneously described as "... a freak, a mutant of nature tht took an odd shape that had never been before and may never be repeated."  This is obviously a mischaracterization of the tornado - it's not a "freak" tornado of a sort never seen before or since.  There are other technical problems within the text, but I prefer not to dwell on those shortcomings.   They're to be expected from a meteorological outsider.

The strongest part of the book remains the emotional impact of the stories told by the eyewitnesses.  We should be moved, even to tears, by the experiences of those tornado victims, even though we may struggle (and fail) to comprehend the reality of the experience, unless we ourselves have had equal experiences.  In discussing the Tri-State tornado with living eyewitnesses during my own research into the Tri-State tornado, it's evident that even 80 years later, their memories of that day are crystalline in their clarity.  It was evidently one of the most important events in the lives of its victims, and the impacts have diminished little in nearly a century!  That should tell those of us who've not experienced something of this magnitude that we need to heed the message:  do not take the threat of such events lightly, or you may live to regret it - or you may not survive the experience.

Rating: 4.0 stars (out of a possible 5)

Storm Kings:  The Untold History of America's First Tornado Chasers

Author:  Lee Sandlin

Publisher:  Pantheon Books, ISBN 978-0307378521

If you’ve ever watched a television documentary about a topic you know something about, then I’m certain you’ll be able to relate to my review of this book.  Since I’ve been a meteorologist interested in tornadoes my entire career, I often have the experience of frustration with attempts by non-meteorologists to present scientific ideas.  This book is, on the one hand, similar to others of its kind owing to science errors.  On the other hand, I also found the narrative to be an enjoyable, and even a compelling read in terms of the history presented.

The term "tornado chaser" today refers to hobbyists of all sorts literally chasing tornadoes to see and photograph them.  Most of the "chasers" who are the subject of this book could not and so did not chase tornadoes in the literal sense of today’s storm chasers.  Rather, they had in common a passion for tornadoes, a feeling to which I can certainly relate.   Many of the pioneers described in the book are recognized names to those meteorologists who know anything about the history of the science.  The author evidently has done his homework and provided considerable historical information about which I knew little or nothing.  This is not a dry, scholarly work, with abundant citations providing source references.  Instead, it’s a historical narrative with documentation of sources packed into a small section at the end of the book.  I would not consider this an authoritative history text, but it fills an unfilled niche and definitely presents much of historical interest.

The author has added considerably to the rather sketchy knowledge I had about such topics as the infamous James Espy-William Redfield "storm wars" – a vitriolic controversy that raged on for many years.  The participants (including others in addition to Espy and Redfield, as documented in this book) all embraced both a few nuggets of truth and many erroneous ideas, as we've come to understand.  As a scientist, it's helpful to be reminded that in scientific controversy, opponents may well be right about some things, as well as wrong about other things.  I believe most potential readers interested in storms, including (but not limited to) meteorologists (and perhaps other scientists as well) will find this book as interesting as I did.  And whereas knowledgeable readers may wince at some of the scientific errors within the narrative, they likely will come away as I did, with an overall positive opinion.

I don't want to dwell overlong on the gaffes, so one example should suffice.  In discussing Espy's rather odd notions about how water vapor condensation powers a thunderstorm, the author mentions how temperature and pressure fall off with altitude.  He says, "This calculation is now called the saturated adiabatic lapse rate".   It seems the author knows some meteorology jargon but is unaware of the distinction between how temperature and pressure vary in the real world versus how they vary under certain idealized assumptions.  It's the latter to which the particular jargon refers.  Such misunderstandings are widely scattered throughout the narrative, so readers ought not to accept the author's scientific explanations as uniformly correct.  This is to be expected for a non-scientist author, of course, and this book clearly is not intended to be a meteorology textbook – it succeeds admirably in failing to be one.  Let the reader beware of the science.

I particularly enjoyed the content about John Park Finley.  I didn't know he was active in promoting underground storm shelters, nor was I aware of his military superiors' opposition to this, who also sought to discredit the tornado frequencies Finley had found in his research.  Today, we know the risk of being hit by a tornado in the plains actually is much larger than what Finley found.   Quantitatively, however, the risk even in "Tornado Alley" (not a scientific term) is such that at any particular point, a thousand years could pass without being hit by a violent tornado.  Although the probabilities are quite low, someone in the region is hit nearly every year.  Finley understood that it's sensible to be prepared despite the relatively low risk.  This message was validated in 2011 by the largest US fatality count (553 deaths for the year) since 1925 – the year of the deadly Tri-State tornado also described in the book.  The vulnerability to tornadoes world-wide is a complex topic involving more than just tornado frequency, since most fatalities occur in single events where a violent tornado hits a populated area.  Hence, for instance, Bangladesh, with its dense population in poorly constructed homes, has a record of very high death tolls from single tornadoes.

The "storm kings" described in the book weren't aware of the occurrence of tornadoes in the outer rainbands of tropical cyclones (hurricanes).  The potential for tornadoes as a tropical storm makes landfall is a real threat, but when storm surge can wipe out miles of low-lying coastal areas, the occurrence of a few tornadoes before the storm surge hits is of much lower economic and social impact.

A factor related to storm preparedness unrecognized by the pioneers of storm science is the human element.  If people are to accept the responsibility to be prepared, they have to believe that tornadoes might affect them personally.  Being prepared for tornadoes is not necessarily costly, but preparedness depends strongly on people’s attitudes.  Much remains to be learned about the meteorology of storms, and even more about how to convey the tornado risk to lay people.

Rating:  3.5 stars (out of a possible 5)

Tornado Warning:  The Extraordinary Women of Joplin

Author:  Tamara Hart Heiner

Publisher:  Dancing Lemur Press, ISBN 978-1939844033

Once again, we have an author who is not a severe storms meteorologist, so the most glaring problem I have with this book is the discussion in the Foreword about the science.  It's a disturbingly unhappy mixture of numerous erroneous statements about the meteorology, a few correct statements about the meteorology, and typos in the text (in my review copy).  Anyone hoping to gain any scientific insight into the Joplin event will have to look elsewhere.  I suggest that anyone purchasing the book skip over the Foreword entirely.  Explaining the science of tornadoes and how they develop was, I'm sure, never a primary objective for the author, and she has not succeeded in that task.  But given the primary goal of the book, this isn't as big an issue as it might have been.  On a positive note, the Afterword contains safety and preparedness tips that evidently were developed with the help of Roger Edwards (NOAA/National Weather Service - Storm Prediction Center) and Prof. Bill Gallus (Iowa State University - Dep't of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences).  The content of the Afterword, in stark contrast to the Foreword, is quite good and contains considerable useful information.

The rest of the book is organized around seven women.  It recounts more or less in chronological order what these women experienced and how they reacted during this tragic event.  Such stories are inevitably full of sadness, but also can address the strength and courage people can find in themselves when confronted with an awful situation.  The author has obviously worked with these women to present a reasonably complete picture of their experiences, but of course no one who hasn't experienced such an event themselves can ever completely understand what the survivors felt.  This book does a good job of getting as close as possible to helping us understand how this terrible storm affected the people of Joplin. 

Overall, the book is well-written, and is worthwhile to anyone who seeks to understand how people cope with devastating events in their lives.  Were it not for the awful Foreword, it would have been rated higher.

Rating: 3.0 stars (out of a possible 5)

America's Deadliest Twister:  The Tri-State Tornado of 1925

Author:  Geoff Partlow

Publisher:  Southern Illinois University Press, ISBN 978-0-8093-3346-2

Yet another book about the Tri-State tornado, by yet another non-meteorologist, focusing mostly on the personal narratives of the victims.  Much of what I've said about similar books applies to this one:  the somewhat repetitive nature of the storm's effects on people's lives and the absence of any meteorologically accurate content.  There's very little attempt at explaining meteorology, which at least has the positive aspect of not saying inaccurate things.  Given my participation in a project to reanalyze the meteorology of the 1925 Tri-State event (see here and here), I was involved in surveying the portion of the path in Missouri, which this book treats quite minimally.  I appreciate the author is from southern Illinois, but there are numerous interesting anecdotes about the storm in Missouri that weren't mentioned at all.  Mostly, the book is about the tornado in Illinois, which certainly was where much of the worst impacts were felt.  The author evidently was unaware of our how our reanalysis has shifted the starting point a few miles to the southwest of where the path is said by Changnon and Semonin4 to have begun, and clarified several aspects of the tornado characteristics along its long track.

For me, the best part of the book are the numerous photographs (many damage photos, as well as images from around the time of the tornado) provided.  It's a bit of a disappointment to see the photos printed on the same paper as the text, although I certainly understand the cost factors involved in printing the photos on special "slick" paper for extra clarity. 

Despite my somewhat gripy reaction to a few aspects of the book, I actually enjoyed reading it.  Its stories are not tediously repetitive and some historical context is provided along the way, which adds interest.  I think those who find the Tri-State event to be a fascinating part of the history of the plains will share my enjoyment of the affordably-priced book. 

Rating:  3.0 stars (out of a possible 5)

What Stands In A Storm

Author:  Kim Cross

Publisher:  Atria Books, ISBN 978-1-4767-6306-4

In the author's own words:  "And in a way, it's not a book about tornadoes. It's about people and resilience. The things that tear our world apart also reveal what holds us together. I'm a big believer in that."  This is an accurate description of the book's content, but the author went to considerable lengths to try to get the meteorology as right as possible, given editorial oversight of the narrative pushing the writing in a direction that can corrupt scientific reluctance for exaggeration and distortion.  She asked me to help her get it done as accurately as possible, which I have to admire.  As for the non-science part of the book, I believe the book succeeds in its goals of telling the story of this massive event through a sampling of individual experiences - similar in spirit to the book by Tamara Hart Heiner (above).   Given my professional bias,  it's the meteorology of the story that fascinates me most, but as the author has said, the book is about people, not tornadoes.  The heartbreaking and horrific stories told by the survivors are similar to those I've heard myself in doing damage surveys, and read about in other books with a similar intent.  As with Heiner's book, putting a human face on the events is important, hopefully to stimulate readers to prepare for natural hazards, and certainly to convey the traumatic impact of these hazards in human terms.  People need to be aware of the potential for natural disasters to devastate their lives.  This book succeeds well in presenting that terrible truth.  My rating reflects the increment associated with the effort to get the science right.

Rating:  4.0 stars (out of a possible 5)


Tornado Watch #211

Author:  John G. Fuller

Publisher:  William Morrow and Co., ISBN 0-688-06590-2, 202 pages

This is yet another book nominally about tornadoes by a non-meteorologist, specifically focused on the major tornado outbreak of 31 May 1985 in OH, PA, and Canada.  The author is a professional writer, but he's prone to flowery language, as indicated by "Meteorologists like [Steve] Weiss are called 'keepers of the gates of Hell' ", which is totally fiction in my experience.  I've never heard such a phrase applied to the SPC forecasters.  There are the usual examples of misleading "information about the meteorology of severe storms, but since they're not really at the core of the book, which is mostly about the human stories that came out after the tornado outbreak, those glitches are relatively minor.  There are numerous examples where I'd like to edit the book to correct its annoying mistakes. 

According to an index of outbreak intensity I devloped with colleagues, the 31 May 1985 outbreak is the #4-ranked tornado outbreak since 1960.  Therefore, as a historically important tornado outbreak, it inevitably included the human tragedies that such storms can produce.  As usual, complacency played a role in the fatality and injury counts, which is a point that needs to be made over and over again.  Even outside of traditional "tornado alley" violent tornadoes can strike areas where people are likely to think tornadoes don't happen to their communities - a potentially fatal error.  I think the book (like Kim Cross's book, above) mostly succeeds in conveying the human side of the event, and in fact, it's the book's strongest point.  The meteorology isn't the worst I've seen, but not very well-done.  This book also makes the observation that people affected by tornadoes can have the long-lingering psychological damage we now refer to as "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)".   We found examples of PTSD among the survivors of the 18 March 1925 "Tri-State" outbreak,9 so tornadoes can affect a person's life for the rest of their lives.

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of a possible 5)


Fierce Beauty: Storms of the Great Plains

Author: Eric Meola

Publisher:  Images Publishing, ISBN 9781864708387

Eric Meola is a well-known professional photographer who began chasing storms with Tempest Tours after some early experiences with storms.  His book gives a brief history of his chasing experiences but what he brings to the reader is his love for the Great and High Plains region of the USA, and his images reflect that romance.  If one wishes simply to own the best "coffee table" collection of storm images, that's just part of what the book represents to me.  I share Eric's love for the plains and his images make that abundantly clear.  The author not being a severe storms meteorologist isn't a problem because the book is not intended to be a tutorial for storm chasers but rather is a paean to the beauty of the plains and to the sky that routinely produces extremely dramatic images.   The sky is not just background for the photos, but is an essential component of all the photos in the book.  The publisher deserves credit for the high quality of the paper and prints of the raw images.  As of this time, the book is solidly at the top of my ordered heap of storm-oriented photo books.  I don't have any reservations about my opinion of the book - I simply have to admire the skilled photography and Meola's technical mastery of the digital photo medium.  The book is cheap at any price!

Rating: 5 stars (out of a possible 5)

Twister

Author:  Jack Bickham

Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1976, ISBN 0-385-11499-0, 397 pp.

This book is not about tornadoes.  Rather, it's a work of fiction, but it's at least nominally related to the movie by the same name.  My first impression is influenced by the fact that the book talks about NSSFC and NSSL - organizations with which I was pretty familiar, even at the time the story takes place (April 1975 - the month I was married). But the occupants of those organizations are not the people I knew. Instead, the book requires me to become acquainted with a cast of unfamiliar people occupying the roles of people I know. I don't think I've ever before experienced that while reading a book. This novel is about the fictional characters that the author has created and even incorporates some gratuitous sex.  It's disconcerting to realize how many characters the author has created, and it's correspondingly difficult to follow them from chapter to chapter.

This book is not at all about storm chasing, and none of the movie characters are included in the "cast" of the book.  Instead, the book focuses on how a fictional major tornado outbreak affects the fictional characters.  Despite the author's efforts to provide somewhat accurate descriptions of the organizations NSSFC and NSSL, there are the typical science errors that inevitably crop up when a book dealing with tornadoes is written by a "carpetbagger".  These include (but not limited to), for instance:

p.  86, the OKC office of the NWS does not issue severe weather watches
p. 89, an tale adapted from the dubious account of looking up into a tornado overhead on 22 June 1928 by a farmer named Will Keller
p. 147, a dubious account of chickens de-feathered anf killed
p. 159, the old canard about the pressure drop causing buildings to explode, and an inaccurate claim that a well-built house being incapable of surviving a direct tornado hit
p. 367, the old canard about 1800 thunderstorms ongoing at any given moment
p. 372ff, a wildly fictional description of lightning in a severe storm.

This is not a book worth reading if you're interested in learning about tornadoes.

Rating:  1star (out of a possible 5)

Next entry:

Author: 

Publisher:



Rating



FOOTNOTES

1 For instance, in:

Doswell, C.A. III, A.R. Moller and H.E. Brooks (1999): Storm spotting and public awareness since the first tornado forecasts of 1948. Wea. Forecasting, 14, 544-557.

2 O'Gara, W.H., 1988: In All Its Fury: A History of the Great Blizzard of January 12, 1888. J&L Lee Books, Lincoln, NE, ISBN 0-934904-04-9, 343 pp.

3 See:

Doswell, C.A. III, and and D.W. Burgess, 1988: On some issues of United States tornado climatology. Mon. Wea. Rev., 116, 495-501.

4 This idea was first presented in:

Changnon, S.A., and R.G. Semonin, 1966: A great tornado disaster. Weatherwise, 19, 56-65,

which is not a refereed journal. Later, it appeared in:

Wilson, J.W., and S. Changnon, 1971: Illinois tornadoes. Illinois State Water Survey, Circular 103, 32-41.

In neither of these "publications" would there have been any semblance of a rigorous scientific review of this speculative notion.

5 For example, the now out-of-print epic work:

Grazulis, T.P., 1993: Significant tornadoes: 1680-1991. The Tornado Project, St. Johnsbury, VT, 1340 pp.

6 See item #38 at http://www.flame.org/~cdoswell/chasesums/Chase_FAQ/ChaseFAQ.html for a brief dismissal of this issue.

7 See Section 9 at http:/ /www.flame.org/~cdoswell/wxmod/wxmod.html for a discussion of tornado modification.

8 See:  Maddox, R.A., and C.A. Crisp, 1999: The Tinker AFB tornadoes of March 1948. Wea. Forecasting, 14, 492-499.

9 See item #112:  Johns, R.H., D.W. Burgess, C.A. Doswell III, M.S. Gilmore, J.A. Hart, and S.F. Pilz, 2013:  The 1925 Tri-State tornado damage path and associated storm systemElectronic J. Severe Storms Meteor., 8(2), 1–33.