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Sources for Chapter 7

The books, Web sites, journal articles, and interviews listed on this page are sources of information other than facts and concepts found in most beginning college-level meteorology textbooks, which the author used or that could help readers better understand the concepts described. For more on various topics, including further reading and links to related Web sites, follow the links labeled “Explorations.” Links labeled “Outtakes” are to text from early drafts of the book that were dropped before publication.

In the notes below “the author” refers to Jack Williams, author of The AMS Weather Book.

Page 150–151
  • The snow in the two-page photo missed by a day disrupting the January 21, 2005, second inauguration of President George W. Bush. Inauguration planners and those forecasting the weather for them always worry about the possibility of disruptive snow or bitter cold, maybe both. How often has this happened? The Presidential Inaugural Weather page on the NWS Baltimore/Washington Forecast Office Web site has the answers in its history of each inauguration’s weather.
Page 152
  • The account of forecasting the March 1993 “Storm of the Century” is based on the author’s interview with Louis Uccellini in his office in Camp Springs, Maryland. Also Louis W. Uccellini, et al., “Forecasting the 12–14 March 1993 Superstorm,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) 76 (February 1995): 183–199.
Page 153
Page 154
  • David Laskin’s The Children’s Blizzard (New York: Harper Collins, 2004) tells the story of the January 1888 blizzard and U.S. weather forecasting of the time.
  • The six hurricanes that hit the United States in 1893 and the Galveston, Texas, 1900 hurricane are described at length in Bob Sheets and Jack Williams, Hurricane Watch: Forecasting the Deadliest Storms on Earth (New York: Vintage, 2001), 52–58 and 61–70.
Page 155
Page 157
  • State of forecasting in 1888:Laskin, The Children’s Blizzard, 85.
Page 158
  • The Suzzane Van Cooten profile is based on the author’s interview with her at the American Meteorological Society’s office in Washington, D.C., and subsequent e-mail exchanges. For more information on her and her work see the interview with her and Kevin Kelleher, a Severe Storms Laboratory colleague, available on the NOAA Research Web site.
Pages 157–159
  • A good, summary discussion of the scientific advances of meteorology from the late eighteenth century into the early twentieth century is found in Jeffrey Rosenfeld’s Eye of the Storm: Inside the World’s Deadliest Hurricanes, Tornadoes, and Blizzards (New York: Plenum, 1999), 59–114.
  • Erik D. Craft’s “An Economic History of Weather Forecasting,” available on the Economic History of Weather Forecasting Web site, traces the history of forecasting from an economic point of view, including figures on the value of Great Lakes forecasts in the 1870s and 1880s.
Page 159
Page 162
Page 164
Page 163–164
  • Chaos complications: Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, has an extensive article on chaos theory with numerous references and an extensive bibliography of print and online sources.
  • Edward N. Lorenz, The Essence of Chaos, reprint, illustrated, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995): “I stopped the computer …” 134; “If the flap of a butterfly’s wing …” 181; “a meteorologist recalls …” 15
  • Explorations: Weather and the Arts (prompted by Lorenz’s mention of the novel storm)
Pages 164–165
Page 165
  • Spaghetti plots: Images and information from Zoltan Toth, NWS Environmental Modeling Center.
  • Capital Weather Gang Blog
  • Delivering forecasts: Based on a telephone interview with Lynn Maximuk.
Page 166
Pages 167–168
Page 169
  • Aviation forecasts: NWS public forecasts like the example used are available from NWS local offices. Aviation weather forecasts are available from the NWS Aviation Weather Center Web site.
  • Forecasts for airlines: Based on the author’s interviews with Warren Qualley in his Norman, Oklahoma, office and with Steve Abelman by telephone and subsequent e-mail follow ups.
Pages 169–171
Pages 170–171
  • Robert Sumwalt profile: Based on the author’s interview with him in his Washington, D.C., office and subsequent e-mail exchanges. Sumwalt’s NTSB biography is available online.
Page 171–173
  • Looking far ahead: New York Times archives; William E. Riebsame, “News Media Coverage of Seasonal Forecasts: The Case of Winter 1982–83,” BAMS 64 (December 1983): 1351–1356.
  • How winter of 1982–83 turned out: Roderick S. Quiroz, “The Climate of the ‘El Niño’ Winter of 1982–83: A Season of Extraordinary Climatic Anomalies,” Monthly Weather Review 111 (August 1983): 1685–1706.
  • Frederic Golden, Russell Leavitt, and Jerry Hannitin’s “Tracking That Crazy Weather,” Time Magazine (April 11, 1983) reflects the emerging knowledge of El Niño in the spring of 1983, with conjectures that solar activity or large volcanic eruptions might trigger El Niños.
Page 174
Page 175

book jacket
The AMS Weather Book:The Ultimate Guide to America’s Weather
Jack Williams
With Forewords by Rick Anthes and Stephanie Abrams
©2009, 368 pages, 140 color plates, 70 halftones 8-1/2 x 10-7/8
Cloth $35.00 ISBN: 9780226898988



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