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by Tim Vasquez 2004 / 136 pp. / / $24.95 / ISBN 0-9706840-5-3 7 1/2 x 10 3/4" / True bound / Offset print / Glossy color cover Historic weather stories are engrained in American culture. We all remember where we were during the Storm of the Century and we’ve heard about the film and novel The Perfect Storm. Some of us may have even heard about the Winter of 1899 or the heat waves of 1936. However it is often difficult to find anything on these weather events beyond anecdotal “human interest” stories. Technical case studies do surface that detail the more significant events, but many tend to become obscure, either disappearing into old publications, minimally circulated, or a victim of the “out of print” syndrome. This is disappointing as meteorologists must be able to understand historic record-setting weather events before they can effectively anticipate future ones. Numerical models do not perform well in such situations, yet ironically it is during significant weather events where they are depended upon most heavily. The book Extreme American Weather is a reference guide for the most significant forecasting events that have ever occurred in the United States. Surface and upper-air charts detailing the event’s lifecycle are combined with summaries, newspaper accounts, and meteorological information. Extreme American Weather is also educational and interactive, presenting twelve unanalyzed events with solutions and discussions so that readers can try their hand at travelling into the past and analyzing historical weather.
Who it's for    
About the author: Tim Vasquez draws on an extensive tapestry of meteorological experience, which started in his childhood years in California, Germany, the Philippines, Arizona, and Texas. After managing the weather page of a Dallas newspaper for five years, he spent ten years in the Air Force, where he provided aviation weather forecasting and support in Texas, Nevada, England, Korea, and Kenya, as well as television work for AFRTS and KTXS-12 in Abilene. Tim has been an active storm chaser since 1986, an activity where there is no tolerance for forecasting errors. He has also written a suite of weather forecasting tools such as Digital Atmosphere used extensively within the weather industry. Tim is owner of Weather Graphics Technologies and lives near Norman, Oklahoma with his wife Shannon, a former National Severe Storms Laboratory research assistant. |
