Books
From ‘Adverse Winds’ to Microbursts
Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather
Smith, Mike. Austin, Texas, U.S.: Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2010. 304 pp. Photographs.
Mark Twain’s quip that everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it has been made obsolete by today’s meteorology, to aviation safety’s great benefit.
Mike Smith, himself a meteorologist, has been involved for most of his career with measuring and forecasting extreme weather to enhance safety. Despite minuscule financing compared with that for cancer research, heart disease research and traffic safety innovations, meteorology has resulted in “a far more impressive reduction of deaths,” Smith says.
The annual death rate from tornadoes in the United States has decreased from three per million people in the 1920s to 0.068 per million in 2006 through 2009, he says. Weather science’s influence on aviation safety …
