Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather

[jhefner]

http://www.amazon.com/Warnings-Story-Science-Tamed-Weather/dp/1608320340

From Publishers Weekly

A well-known meteorologist and founder of WeatherData, Smith takes readers on a fast-paced account of the biggest storms in recent years and how weather forecasting has developed into a true science since the 1950s. Part memoir, part science account, Smith's tale begins in the late 1940s, when weathermen were actually forbidden to broadcast tornado warnings. The U.S. Weather Bureau blocked storm forecasting for fear of getting it wrong, just as today, according to Smith, the FAA has banned weather radios from airport control towers. He delivers a moment-by-moment account of the monster tornado that leveled Greensburg, Kans., in 2007 as well as a damning account of governmental incompetence in the leadup to Hurricane Katrina. But as Smith shows, scientists themselves can be close-minded and prevent their field from progressing: Smith recounts the struggle by Theodore Fujita, creator of the tornado severity scale, to see his findings on microbursts—which have killed hundreds of people in airline crashes—accepted by other scientists. This account of people who do something about the weather should appeal to just about anyone who enjoys talking about it. Photos. (May)
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Product Description

Experience the most devastating storms of the last fifty years through the eyes of the scientific visionaries who took them on and tamed them.

For decades, the author, a pioneering meteorologist, has dedicated himself to saving lives by combining science, experience, and instinct. The struggle to understand nature's fury provides fascinating insights into the natural forces that shape our world, and the turbulent politics that influence our scientific establishment.

Tracing the Herculean effort to improve weather forecasting and advanced warning systems, the author draws fascinating biographical sketches of the scientists behind the breakthroughs, such as Dr. Theodore Fujita, creator of the Fujita Scale for tornado measurement.

With its gripping story-telling approach to major natural disasters, Warnings is narrative nonfiction at its heart-pounding best.

They were interviewing the author on the radio this morning. He was also saying that due to infighting between departments in government for the credit; it took 35 years for doppler radar to go from the first sighting of a tornado event on one to the instrument that is regularly used today.

It is also the use of doppler radar that allows airports and pilots to detect and avoid downdrafts and mircobursts, such as the one that brought down Delta Air Lines Flight 191 while attempting to land at DFW airport on August 2, 1985:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Air_Lines_Flight_191

Along with training pilots on the proper proceed for escaping from a mircroburst, he pointed out that crashes due to microbursts have declined from one every 1.5 years to not one in 17 years.

Also, while the recent tornado that went through Yahzoo City in Mississippi took ten lives; it was a much more powerful tornado than the one that went through Tupelo Mississippi in 1936; killing 233 people. (Elvis Presley was one of the survivors.) It was a good example of how today's early warning systems have dramatically helped to reduce falities due to severe weather.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupelo-Gainesville_Outbreak

-James

 

[aeromed202]

I'll have to get that. Thanks for the link. On a similar topic there is also a superb book called Heaven's Breath by Lyall Watson. I re-read it every so often because it is a treasure of weather information and history. If you ever wanted to know what a Chinook is, how the Pacific Islands may have been populated, or perhaps why the flu is so hard to pin down pick this up.