Product Description

Tornadoes are the most violent, magnificent, and utterly unpredictable storms on earth, reaching estimated wind speeds of 300 mph and leaving swaths of destruction in their wake. In Tornado Alley, Howard Bluestein draws on two decades of experience chasing and photographing tornadoes across the Plains to present a fascinating historical account of the study of tornadoes and the great thunderstorms that spawn them. A century ago, tornado warnings were so unreliable that they usually went unreported. Today, despite cutting-edge Doppler radar technology and computer simulation, these storms remain remarkably difficult to study. Leading scientists still conduct much of their research from the inside of a speeding truck, and often contend with jammed cameras, flash floods, and windshields smashed by hailstones and flying debris. Using over a hundred diagrams, models, and his own spectacular color photographs, Bluestein documents the exhilaration of hair-raising encounters with asmany as nine tornadoes in one day, as well as the crushing disappointment of failed expeditions and ruined equipment. Most of all, he recreates the sense of beauty, mystery, and power felt by the scientists who risk their lives to study violent storms. For scientists, amateur weather enthusiasts, or anyone who's ever been intrigued or terrified by a darkening sky, Tornado Alley provides not only a history of tornado research but a vivid look into the origin and effects of nature's most dramatic phenomena.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #391459 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-15
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .2 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Bluestein, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, has been pursuing tornadoes since long before storm-chasing emerged as a hobby of choice for thrill seekers. Though his motivation is primarily scientific, he acknowledges the role awe plays in his quest to understand these violent yet magnificent storms. He invites readers to accompany him on his two decades of storm-tracking through the famed "Tornado Alley" of the American Great Plains. When Bluestein points excitedly at a tornado or cloud formation, he directs the reader's gaze not to the power of the event alone, but also to details of its form and dynamics. In doing so, he employs the straightforward and often detailed discourse of the enthusiastic scientist discussing the topic that has driven his intellectual life. The book's historical organization traces the development of severe-weather science through the last half-century, from early anecdotal observations to today's high-technology measurements. The story ends where it began: at the dawn of a new quest into fuller understanding of the origin and development of these monster storms, demanding ever more detailed observations using ever advancing technologyAplus an ample dose of old-fashioned human curiosity and awe. Myriad illustrations and vivid photographs, many of which Bluestein himself shot, help break up the dense technical prose.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, Bluestein lives in the heart of Tornado Alley, an area extending from northern Texas to central Nebraska that claims the highest reported rate of tornado occurrence in the world. In his first book written for a general audience, he explains what is known about the genesis of tornadoes and their parent stormsAnot muchAand presents a personal history of modern severe-storm research. Bluestein is a storm chaser, someone who pursues severe thunderstorms in an attempt to find (and study) tornadoes. It sounds like a dangerous occupation, but his accounts of chases are characterized mostly by good-natured complaints about malfunctioning automobiles and uncooperative weather gods. The book includes more than 100 of Bluestein's photographs of storm clouds and vortexes, which are not only spectacularly beautiful but also clarify his rather technical descriptions of severe-storm phenomena. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries, particularly those in tornado-prone areas.ANancy Curtis, Univ. of Maine Lib., Orono
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Radical-event meteorologist Bluestein (Univ. of Oklahoma) depicts with paint-by-number clarity (albeit with a more delicately shaded and elegant end product) the lives and quirky personalities of severe storms, particularly tornadoes. Tornadoes are one of the last frontiers of atmospheric science because, being on the ferocious and elusive side they don't exactly lend themselves to intimate study. And it doesn't help that these most violent of storms come in multiple personalities: Sometimes theyre accompanied by powerful thunderstorms and mega-hail, sometimes not; they spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, clockwise in the Southern, and sometimes the reverse; they are oriented vertically, or not; they occur at all times of day, be it cold or hot; they proceed along a course, unless they decide to turn around. Bluestein shuffles between explaining what has been learned of severe-storm physics (and the wealth of instruments deployed to measure wind, temperature, pressure, and electrical behavior) and yarn-spinning his and his fellow storm-chasers antics. Its a tribute to Bluestein that he can keep the attention of those who are less than weather junkies, even when he must get across to readers that ``air being squirted in the main updraft at the tropopause level has enough kinetic energy to flow back against the upper level winds.'' The descriptions of the storms themselves are nothing less than awesome. In one, a man peers into the heart of a tornado as it slowly jumps over him, revealing its half-mile-high walls of rotating, debris-strewn air, an infernal chamber backlit by a spectacular electrical light show. This fusion of the terrible and the sublime has spawned an artful lexicon: updrafts and downshears, splashing cirrus and overshooting tops (not to mention the less poetically named mountainadoes and gustanadoes). An entrancing summary of what is known and conjectured about tornadoes, from a man who has been running after them for over 20 years. (67 color, 44 b&w photos, 50 illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.