Product Description

The ultimate book for the weather enthusiast or anyone interested in the oddities and extremes of nature.

There are few thrills as exciting as weather at its worst. We often hear on the news that the day was the hottest, coldest, wettest, or snowiest on record. Is the climate really becoming more extreme as a result of global warming? The facts are in this book.

Extensively illustrated with color photographs of some of the most extreme weather ever captured on camera, dozens of color maps, and tables of weather records for over three hundred U.S. cities, this book is both an entertainment and an indispensable reference.

Also included are historical examples of some of the more bizarre weather events observed: heat bursts, electrified dust storms, snow rollers, pink snowstorms, luminous tornadoes, falls of fish and toads, ball lightning, super bolts, and other strange meteorological events. Here's the must-have book for Weather Channel and Guinness Book of World Records fans. 80 color and 35 black-and-white photos, 40 maps.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #408126 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Weather-watchers will rejoice in this lavishly illustrated compendium of the hottest, coldest, wettest, driest, windiest, snowiest, wildest and weirdest weather on the planet. Burt, an amateur meteorologist and publisher of the Compass American Guidebook series, explores extreme weather phenomena in digestible mini-essays complemented by sidebars on such oddities as colored snow and luminous tornadoes. The whole is supplemented by maps, lists of destructive storms, and photos of towering thunderheads, raging floodwaters and the devastated remains of human settlement. The focus is on the United States, thunderstorm and tornado capital of the world thanks to the Great Plains collision between warm, moist Gulf air and cool, dry Canadian air. But Burt also looks at meteorological problem areas abroad, such as Bangladesh, where cyclonic storm surges killed 300,000–500,000 people in 1970 and a further 139,000 in 1991. In addition to regaling readers with prodigies, Burt exhaustively tabulates weather records for each state and for hundreds of U.S. cities. Although his discussion of the science behind the weather tends toward the cursory, this eminently browsable blizzard of sensational facts will delight budding meteorologists and barroom wagerers alike.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School - This book has enough information packed within its pages to keep the most ardent weather watchers busy. Chapters are arranged by such phenomena as thunderstorms and hail, snow and ice, windstorms and fog, etc., and liberally illustrated with beautiful black-and-white and color photographs, charts, and maps. True "junkies" will pore over the appendixes that include a map of weather stations and state and city precipitation records. In the course of discussing each type of occurrence, Burt offers numerous items of interest. For example, Key West has only one foggy day each year, while the "foggiest of the foggy" towns in the U.S. is Cape Disappointment at the mouth of the Columbia River. Mysteries such as why most other countries in the world, with the possible exception of India and Bangladesh, do not experience as many severe thunderstorms as the United States does are clearly explained. Discussions of scales such as the Fujita, used to measure the strength of a tornado, and the Saffir-Simpson, used to measure hurricanes, are included. Eyewitness accounts are scattered throughout. This book will captivate weather lovers and make converts of others. - Peggy Bercher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Christopher C. Burt was co-founder and publisher of the acclaimed Compass American Guidebook series. A lifelong weather enthusiast, he studied meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This is his first book. He lives in Oakland, California.

Customer Reviews

Spectacular! I wish I had written it
This is the book a weather nut like me wished he had thought to write first. Great maps and photos, tables of data, and he asks for corrections, publishing them, with updates, at www.extremeweatherguide.com .
The photos, such as Lincoln, NE, summer 1936, are spectacular, as are his colored maps of everything (wettest and driest spots by state is one example).

He even has NYC data from the mid 19th Century, with "the day that never got above zero" Now that takes some hunting to dig up.

A great gift, as well as a wonderful resource. All libraries, as well as anyone interested in the weather should have a copy.

A terrific reference
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.

Extreme Weather Reference Book
This is well written with a wealth of easy-to-understand graphics and tables. It is divided into 8 parts: Heat & Drought, Cold, Snow & Ice, Rain & Floods, Thunderstorms & Hail, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Windstorms, Fog and El Niño-Southern Oscillatiion. Appendices include maps, records and conversion tables.

This is a wealth of information, often shown as very useful maps. The book will have to be updated as information is only presented in pre-1865 inch-pound measuring units and not the US system of measurement, SI or "metric" units. The author presents means and extremes in every category, world wide, complete with anecdotes of luminous snowfall and tornadoes, lightning pranks, heat and cold, storminess, maximum aridity and precipitation. This is not the "end all, be all," but pulls together information that is otherwise scattered in academic texts not normally available to the general public.

Emphasis is on the US and North America. There is no discussion of effective moisture (Index of Moisture, precipitation compared to the climatic demand for moisture, potential and actual evapotranspiration). Recent severe blizzards are chronicled, but a "blizzard" is never defined. Föen or chinook winds are discussed for Colorado and Utah, but ignored for Sierra Nevada and Cascades of WA, OR and CA.

The author points out 1) records will always be broken and 2) unprecedented events do not presage extraordinary explanations. These are two thoughts that should be on the wall of every television, radio, newspaper, magazine and internet weathercaster. This book is a fun read and very handy to have close by.