Tornadoes and Their Groupies

kw: book reviews, tornadoes, storm chasers, weather phenomena, global warming

Mark Svenvold, Fordham University's Poet-in-Residence, spent a summer traveling with veteran storm chaser Matt Biddle, logging 6,000 miles in May, 2004. His book Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America (Henry Holt, publisher)s not so much a chronicle as a memoir and meditation. The book has copious endnotes and a good index, but no bibliography.

The first half of May that year was quiet, quiet enough to drive hundreds of storm-chasers half crazy. The second half was anything but. May 22 produced the Hallam, NE tornado, which basically plowed a furrow some sixty miles wide, and as wide as 2.5 miles, the widest on record.

Mark and Matt didn't see that one. The account in the book is from several eyewitnesses (and some scar-witnesses). But they saw plenty of others.

With the phenomenon of storm-chasing, quite a number of allied subjects fall under scrutiny: the classes of chasers (from yahoos to scientists), the advent and rise of the Weather Channel, and possible influences of global warming among them. Actually, it seems in retrospect that a third of the writing is polemical, intended to convince the reader of the reality, not just of global warming, but of human causes thereof.

Plenty of ink, and several photos, goes to Sean Casey and his "Tornado Intercept Vehicle" (TIV), a homemade tank weighing over six tons. Mr. Casey doesn't fit any other category, but is serious enough, and has learned enough, to earn the respect of the operators of the Doppler-on-Wheels (DOW) trucks from the Center for Severe Weather Research.

He was preaching to choir in my case. But I'm one who sees more benefit than loss in that equation. I know the math better than most. We know CO2 has about doubled since 1850. We can figure it has resulted in about a degree or two (F; or half to 1 deg C) of warming. Most of this has been polar. In temperate latitudes, the main effect has been greater variability: longer, warmer spring and summer, colder but shorter winter, with more violent storms more common than before. If the amount of CO2 were increased ten times, the maximum warming would be 4-6 deg F (2-3 C), so there's a limit to what will result just by our burning stuff.

There's just enough photography to whet the appetite. To see more, there are plenty of web sites with thousands of pictures. The cultish reaction many chasers have to images and video of tornadoes prompts the author to call it "torn porn." Probably apt. We tend to be drawn to destruction, and nothing causes greater levels of localized destruction than a tornado. A really big one, an F5, leaves only plowed ground. There's plenty to like about Big Weather.