 Overhead, a late summer azure sky displays the delicate tresses of cirrus clouds. Those clouds are called mares' tails and mark the northern edge of hurricane Dennis. Hundreds of miles south of here, a huge whirlpool disturbs the sea and air, a spinning mass of dangerous waves, rain and hundred-mile-an-hour winds. I can see it on television, a massive storm with a dark spot in the middle. Satellites take its picture, planes fly into it and take its temperature. We all know it is there. Even with all of this information, on thin barrier islands perilously close to the storm, on this very day, some people are deciding to finish their vacations watching the surf rise higher and
higher.
I recommend that every one of those people acquire a copy of Isaac's Storm and read it on the way to higher ground. The true story of a wild, intense hurricane which killed thousands of people in Galveston in 1900, Isaac's Storm covers the history of meteorology and forecasting. The two turn out not to be quite the same thing, as prediction had to wait on quick communications and even now can fail to deliver accurate warnings soon enough to force the foolhardy off the lovely sandy beaches. Especially the beaches on islands with only one bridge and roads which are regularly submerged.
Isaac's Storm documents how petty squabbles and feuds which interfered with transmission of warnings, a shaky theory called "The Law of Storms" which was embraced without much reason, and an insanely cheerful attitude combined blithely to reassure the residents that no hurricane would ever hit the thriving, prosperous, sea-circled city of Galveston. The book reads like a thriller, a real page-turner, as the storm grows more and more dangerous and all the clues are ignored, yet it is as touching and almost unbelievable as the later tragic story of the Titanic.
Just the sort of book to read on the beach on a beautiful sunny day in late summer while mares' tail clouds decorate a perfect sky, or even better still, from fifty miles inland. |
