My Favorite Weather History Books…

Someone on Twitter asked WeatherBrains friend Nate Johnson from WRAL for some weather history book recommendations and he passed it along to me. That’s an easy idea, but it’s hard to come up with my top ten relatively recent favorites.

Let’s give it a shot, and you help with your recommendations as well.

10. Sudden Sea by R.A. Scotti. The author weaves an excellent account of the surprise hurricane that wreaked havoc across New England in September 1938.

9. Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather by Mike Smith (reviewed on this week’s WeatherBrains.) This excellent book tells of the progress that we have made in forecasting severe storms from a historical perspective.

8. Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin. Excellent book penned by WeatherBrains guest from show #207 about the Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888.

7. The Ship and the Storm: by Jim Carrier. A fantastic account of how Hurricane Mitch and how it stalked the Windjammer Cruises Tall Sailing Ship Fantome in the Caribbean in 1998.

6. Category 5 by Judith Howard and Ernest Zebrowski. An excellent account of Hurricane Camille’s rampage along the Gulf Coast and Virginia.

5. The Forgotten Storm by Wallace Akin. A great reconstruction of the 1925 Tri-State tornado that raced 234 miles across Missouri, Illinois and Indiana.

4. Black Cloud: The Great Florida Hurricane of 1928 by Elliot Kleinberg. Thousands of poor people had nowhere to run when the 1928 Hurricane caused the waters of Lake Okeechobee to rise up. Kleinberg tells their story.

3. Hemingway’s Hurricane by Phil Scott. An excellent account of how the Federal Government sacrificed hundreds of veterans through their neglect during the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane.

2. Rising Tide by John Barry. Superlative account about the 1927 Mississippi River Flood and the tragic selfishness of New Orleans’ leaders. John will appear on WeatherBrains on the 27th of April.

1. The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough. Not a recent book, but the one by which I measure all historical weather books.

What are yours? I am certain that you can add to my list!

Category: Pre-November 2010 Posts