(++++) FEAR AND WONDER

The Tornado Scientist: Seeing Inside Severe Storms. By Mary Kay Carson. Photographs by Tom Uhlman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $18.99.

     The line here that explains what intrigues tornado-focused meteorologists about these deadly storms is the one about “the drama, excitement, and power of a sky full of wind and lightning.” And potential devastation, although that word does not appear in that particular sentence. But there is nothing morbid in the fascination that tornado scientists such as Robin Tanamachi, the most extensively profiled meteorologist in The Tornado Scientist, feel about these astonishingly powerful, sometimes deadly twisters. Their interest is in figuring out more about how and why tornadoes form so people can get better warnings beforehand and therefore be better able to protect themselves, their families and their property.

     Like other entries in the long-running and always excellent “Scientists in the Field” series, The Tornado Scientist is partly a personality profile and partly an introduction to the way science really works. There are comparisons to help young readers understand the concepts: “The whole [supercell] storm can reach 8 miles (13 km) up into the atmosphere. That’s one and a half Mount Everests.” And there are well-done explanatory pages – clearly telling, for instance, just what that word “supercell” means. It refers to a monstrous, long-lived thunderstorm “that pulls air in and up at hurricane wind speeds,” and is “powered by an upright tube of air, a mesocyclone,” created “when winds high up in the atmosphere aren’t the same as winds down below” in one of several ways. Why does this matter? Wind shear, which is what it is called when winds at different heights behave differently, is an absolutely necessary ingredient for tornado formation – and is notoriously difficult to pinpoint and probably not the only factor involved in the creation of tornadoes. In fact, meteorologists do not really understand just how and why tornadoes form – that is why it is impossible to give people significant advance warnings about them – but readers of The Tornado Scientist will be helped by Mary Kay Carson’s well-done written explanations and by very clearly designed illustrations to learn a lot about what scientists do know.

     And then there are the photographs. Tom Uhlman gives the book most of what makes it visually fascinating, such as a closeup of really big hailstones to go with the caption, “The bigger the hailstones, the stronger the storm,” and a variety of highly dramatic pictures not only of tornadoes but also of the huge storms that spawn them. All this is impressive – and scary, as the photos of post-tornado debris make clear again and again. “Tornado winds turn sticks into spears, shingles into scissors, and boards into battering rams,” reads one photo caption, and the pictures of houses reduced to rubble, cars overturned, and huge areas of emptiness where buildings once stood, are more than enough to engender fear and concern in readers.

     They are also enough to produce determination in Tanamachi and the other scientists who study tornadoes and the storms that produce them. There are homey photos of Tanamachi with her family and of scientists teaching meteorology and gathering in front of computers to strategize that are in stark contrast to the photos of tornadoes’ enormous power and deadliness. And there is discussion throughout the book, uniting all the other elements, of several tornado-studying initiatives known as VORTEX, whose aim Carson describes pithily as “saving lives through science and educating the public on how to stay safe.” That is an admirable goal and is one that, combined with curiosity, drives Tanamachi and the other scientists working on the VORTEX project and other forms of tornado study.

     There is a certain raw fascination to anything with great destructive potential – in fact, an ordinary thunderstorm releases more energy than many nuclear weapons, but the bombs have more power because their energy is released much more quickly, and power is a function both of energy and of speed of release. The supercells that lead to tornadoes are far more powerful than ordinary thunderstorms, and even supercells result in tornado formation only a small percentage of the time. That makes a tornado a rare phenomenon, but one so spectacular in what it can do that humans are justifiably worried and frightened at the prospect of encountering one. Yet many people do experience these super-potent storms – and the vast majority live to tell about it, thanks to the work of dedicated meteorologists like those profiled in The Tornado Scientist.