Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America

FromBig Weather: They arrived in expensive SUVs equipped with portable satellite dishes, ham radio antennae, custom hydrometers, twirling anemometers, and roof-mounted amber flashing lights. They were weather weenies, savants of all things meteorological-liable to vanish suddenly, to wander out of doors for days, then return, their pickup trucks pocked by hailstones, their eyes like saucers. Some were tourists from England, or Europe, or Australia, or South Africa-a meteorologica migratorius, those who, like Saul on the Damascus road, had seen big weather and had been changed at the core. Some were reporters, sent at a moment's notice in foul weather gear, a meteorologica celebratorium, to feed a market rich in catastrophilia. Some were scientists, their laboratory the Oklahoma sky. On a big weather day, they descended en mass upon some small patch of the American republic-some Selina or Seling or Slapout, to gather by the hundreds, blocking traffic for a country mile, cattle lifting their heads in puzzlement, as the storms did the fearful things that storms do, and they, whoever they were, in a bald, unguarded moment on the prairie, found themselves hopping up and down and hollering at the sky.Svenvold, Mark is the author of 'Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America' with ISBN 9780805076462 and ISBN 0805076468.