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Extreme Weather: A Guide and Record Book | 
 enlarge | Author: Christopher C. Burt
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $0.81
You Save: $24.14 (97%)
New (5) Used (27) Collectible (1) from $0.81
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 206328
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 7.5 x 1
ISBN: 0393326586
Dewey Decimal Number: 551.5
EAN: 9780393326581
ASIN: 0393326586
Publication Date: October 30, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Ex-Library. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.
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Product Description
Extensively illustrated and with tables of weather records for over three hundred cities, Extreme Weather is both an entertaining read and an indispensable reference book. Also included are historical examples of some of the more bizarre weather events observed: electric dust storms, pink snowstorms, luminous tornadoes, falls of fish and toads, and other strange meteorological events.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
Great Data/Photos February 27, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is an excellent book that should actually be used as an accompying text to a regular weather text. The cartography is superb and the data is listed in an easy to understand fashion
A terrific reference September 2, 2005
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a wonderful book on weather. And the extreme values it gives are actually fairly interesting and fun to read about. Besides, we all like to know if we're in the middle of truly unusual weather.
The book starts with heat records for every state, both absolute maximums and July averages. As well as maps showing number of days with 90-degree (Fahrenheit) or higher temperatures. We learn about temperature-humidity indexes, heat waves, and even heat bursts. As well as extremes in temperature ranges. There's information about heat extremes in foreign countries as well.
Next we get to cold weather! Heat records for every state, both absolute minimums and January averages. Cold waves. Wind chill. And international extremes. Did you know that near Lake Vostok, in Antarctica, the temperature once reached minus 128.6 degrees Fahrenheit? Brrrr!
We learn about the snowiest cities. And then we get to rainfall records for a big bunch of American cities. There are also records for varying amounts of time. What's the record for rainfall in 30 minutes? It's over 11 inches! And it fell in Sikeshugou, China. And there's material about floods, thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes. As well as wind and fog!
There is a fascinating chapter on hurricanes. I vividly remember Hurricane Carol, which struck in August of 1954. And there's a picture of Providence, Rhode Island, after it was hit by the storm surge from that hurricane. There is also an excellent map of the American Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean coasts, with probabilities per year of being hit by a hurricane, as well as probabilities of being hit by 125 mile-per-hour winds or greater. The five areas that in 2004 that were "overdue" for a hurricane are listed. Of course, as any technical person knows, being "overdue" for a storm does not increase the chance of being hit, if anything, it decreases it. But it does imply that one may be less prepared for one when it does hit. New Orleans is listed as one of the five areas (it was hit by Betsy in 1965 and not hit again until Katrina in 2005). The book explains that the dikes protecting downtown New Orleans, including the French Quarter, from the water in Lake Pontchartrain would almost certainly be overwhelmed by a Category 4 or 5 storm surge. And that if they were, much of that area could be swamped under 20 feet of water. I wish that more people with the responsibility for protecting the city of New Orleans (or voting for its protection) had been more aware of this, so that some of the damage caused by Katrina might have been lessened.
I highly recommend this book.
Very interesting and readable August 14, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a well written and fascinating book on weather extremes. I'm only about 100 pages into it, but I enjoyed it so much I wanted to make a brief comment.
Although the book is mostly about extreme weather phenomena, you'll also learn a lot about more normal types of weather, since if you understand how the more extreme storms are generated, you often can understand how the less severe ones occur as well. But this is done in the context of learning about the more severe and extreme types of weather, which I find an interesting approach. After all, there isn't much when it comes to natural phenomena that's scarier than a hurricane or a tornado (well, earthquakes and tsunamis of course are right up there too, but in weather, they're the kings :-)). I once read that a typical hurricane can release each second 100 times the energy in the first atomic bomb (which was a 20 kiloton bomb).
The book discusses weather extremes from rainfall to tornadoes for the U.S. and the rest of the world, including many fascinating topics, such as internally lit tornadoes that glowed with their own light. Witnesses reported orange lightning bolts coming out of the bottom of the spout which would then be sucked up by the violent winds into the interior, thereby lighting up the entire tornado. There are a couple of photos of these sorts of tornadoes, including a black and white one at night showing two luminous tornadoes that obviously had to be internally lit. Very cool stuff and my only complaint was there weren't more photos like this, but then these are very rare phenomena.
Also, the maximum winds typically don't exceed 325 miles per hour, and most tornadoes are usually more like 75-125 miles per hour. This is just one of the many very interesting topics covered.
Overall a very cool book on weather, and I'll have more to say about it later when I finish the book.
Lotta fun May 2, 2005
Best book on weather I've read since Bomar's Texas Weather. As in Bomar's book, the author understands that it's the unusual weather events that are of most interest to most people, and he doesn't fail to disappoint on that score. A must for all weather nuts.
Excellent and Affordable March 14, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is an excellent book and affordable. Some other reference books are very expensive and don't have the great photos and data presentations that this book has (I still highly recommend the others, but they are not cheap). This book saves a lot of time and makes it easy to show other people exactly what you are trying to say, and they will be impressed with the quality of this publication. Excellent book in its own right and can easily double as a "coffee table book" and a great conversation starter.
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