Stormchasers: The Hurricane Hunters and Their Fateful Flight into Hurricane Janet

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 314 pages
• Published by: W. W. Norton & Company
• Edition: 1st Edition July 2002
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0393020002
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0393020007
• Book Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Weighs: 1.4 pounds

From Library Journal
Toomey is an English professor who also teaches technical writing and coauthored Amelia Earhart's Daughters. So he seems like the right man to take on the post-World War II fighter pilots who happily volunteered to fly into hurricanes with occasionally lethal consequences.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Using the 1955 disappearance of a navy weather plane inside a hurricane as his reference point, Toomey roams about the presatellite history of research into the tempests. Knowledge about hurricanes was so rudimentary that determining their cyclonic structure was considered progress. From that discovery in the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, advances in knowledge and forecasting were modest. By interspersing the history of hurricane research with the preparations of the ill-fated navy crew, Toomey effectively points out how insufficient understanding of meteorological conditions impelled weather planes to fly in such dangerous conditions. Besides the informative technical coverage about hurricane behavior, the twin-engine Neptune plane, and its weather instrumentation, Toomey delivers an understated narrative that ennobles crew members. He doesn't inflate basic information that's known about them, and alludes to their awareness of the perils in their assignment. Toomey's dramatization of scenarios of what might have happened to the crew--a ditching in the storm's eye or midair wing failure--will keep readers rapt. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Reader Reviews
David Toomey's well researched book has an astounding wealth of information that is both stunning in detail and fascinating in every aspect. This book drew my attention because of my own obsession with hurricanes, having been through several in North Carolina,(to include Fran, Bonnie,and Floyd ). During Floyd we were in the eye of the storm at night and went out and looked up into a clear, silent sky and watched as suddenly a hurricane hunter flew overhead, the only sound at all. David Toomey details the thoughts that went into the changing views of weatheras a philosophy and the evolution into the science of meteorology. This transformation from philosophy to science is interesting. Weather phenomena was thought to be only a local event and the idea that weather traveled from one area to another was not even imagined. The idea of weather patterns was a foreign concept as well. Toomey details this transformation which spans the continents, including battles of very differing ideas. The leap in the quantity of scientific data and reliability of it's use from the the 1950's to present time is amazing. This scientific evolution was also a big push in the development of computers, originally called a "calculating clock"(in 1623), then "stepped reckoner" (1673), and then a giant leap to the "Difference Engine" in the 1830's. This subject in and of itself would have been a great subject. Throughout all of this history of meteorology, the key aspect of this book centers on the people that flew into the hurricanes to obtain the data that would revolutionize hurricane forecasting. Their lives are opened and the picture that is viewed is of normal, everyday men. They saw their mission in life and pursued it, even in the face of daunting odds and tremendous danger. David Toomey has written a book that covers the world of hurricanes from the science to the very human and intimate aspects that surround them and has done so in a way that both educates and captivates your attention.