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Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains. H. Bluestein. 1999. 192 pp. $35.00. Clothbound. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19510552-4.
Tornadoes are the most violent and spectacular atmospheric creatures that nature produces. They inspire awe, fear, and curiosity owing to their beauty and violence. While other phenomena such as hurricanes or droughts can have greater scale or socioeconomic impact, nothing compares to the intense and capricious mayhem that a tornado can produce in a seemingly unpredictable instant, scarring the landscape, turning neighborhoods into rubble, and killing and injuring the unsheltered.
Tornadoes are elusive phenomena and pose unique challenges to those who aspire to unravel their secrets. They last mere minutes. The location and time at which they will occur is extremely difficult to predict. They are very small. Those who aspire to observe and understand tornadoes must adopt a modus operandi distinct from their more conventional scientific colleagues. They must become tornado chasers, akin to big game hunters of decades past.
Howie B. Bluestein is the dean of scientific storm chasers. Immediately after arriving at the University of Oklahoma from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976, he started a career of intercepting, observing, and studying tornadoes and the thunderstorms that produce them. While he is not the first scientist to attempt to intercept tornadoes (that distinction belongs to Benjamin Franklin), Bluestein has done more than any other to advance the understanding of tornadoes and thunderstorms through direct observation and...