What do you think?
Rate this book
Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America
"Svenvold clearly paid his dues in Tornado Alley . . . Wherever he touches down, he informs and amuses, and marvels not only at the weather, but also at the stranger side of Middle America." --National Geographic
Why do some people chase the kind of storms that would send most people running for their lives? Why does devastating weather maintain a primal hold on our collective imagination?
With Matt Biddle, an Ahab-like veteran storm chaser, as his guide, Mark Svenvold draws a portrait of a culture enamored by extremes during a 6,000-mile journey through the heartland. Along the way, he encounters an assortment of eccentric characters, including a duo named the Twister Sisters and an IMAX filmmaker who drives an armor-plated truck. And they're all after one thing.
At the heart of the excitement are the awe-inspiring events themselves--a tornado that levels a small Nebraska town, wild twisters that spin cars into the air and, in the case of unlucky Donald Staley, destroy three of his homes in succession.
An entertaining narrative brimming with stylish prose, Big Weather is a wryly observed meditation on the weather and the subculture of catastrophilia, the culture and commerce of catastrophic weather.
Why do some people chase the kind of storms that would send most people running for their lives? Why does devastating weather maintain a primal hold on our collective imagination?
With Matt Biddle, an Ahab-like veteran storm chaser, as his guide, Mark Svenvold draws a portrait of a culture enamored by extremes during a 6,000-mile journey through the heartland. Along the way, he encounters an assortment of eccentric characters, including a duo named the Twister Sisters and an IMAX filmmaker who drives an armor-plated truck. And they're all after one thing.
At the heart of the excitement are the awe-inspiring events themselves--a tornado that levels a small Nebraska town, wild twisters that spin cars into the air and, in the case of unlucky Donald Staley, destroy three of his homes in succession.
An entertaining narrative brimming with stylish prose, Big Weather is a wryly observed meditation on the weather and the subculture of catastrophilia, the culture and commerce of catastrophic weather.
304 pages, Paperback
First published May 10, 2005
7 people are currently reading
84 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 24, 2016
REVIEW AUTHOR'S NOTE: This review was written exclusively for the Goodreads.com website, and if you are reading this review on Amazon or an affiliated party's website please understand this is in violation of the original contractual understanding and non-commercial spirit with which I joined Goodreads--for the purpose of writing reviews without intent of profit or to provide profit to entities like Amazon that do not offer remuneration for my efforts. My review MUST carry this caveat and not be truncated.
--------
The review:
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks Like we're in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye...
(From the song "Bad Moon Rising," by John Fogerty, quoted on page 148 of Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America.)
If that quote stood in mere isolation--the expected throwaway lead-off quote in a book about tornadoes-- it would elicit little pause or comment.
But, like a lot of things in this book it's a pretty creepy portent.
Big Weather... in grand, wild, whirlwind fashion chronicles the Midwestern storm chase season during the meteorologically active month of May 2004, a month that saw the second widest tornado in history destroy the town of Hallam, Nebraska. It also provides a sprawling template for author Svenvold to wax philosophic on matters directly and not-so-directly related to the lure of the chase and to the mindsets of the denizens of the Great Plains, hearty and stubborn Red-State, Bible-thumping folk whose odd brand of faith seems to preclude ever building basements despite persistent disaster (one fellow chronicled in the book has his Moore, Oklahoma, house destroyed three times in barely as many years; and may have possibly had it decimated again in the recent May 2013 EF5 monster).
Svenvold begins and ends his tale in the burg of El Reno, Oklahoma, a town west of Oklahoma City and one of the most tornado-prone places on Earth. From there, the parallels between what Svenvold writes from the perspective of 2004 and this past May's (2013) El Reno monster (EF3/EF5, depending on the calculation)--the widest tornado in history--become eerily clear.
The El Reno tornado of May 31, 2013, was the grand climax of the year's storm season, one that saw successively more spectacular storms as the month progressed. In some ways, this spring provided a strange coda to Svenvold's book that he could not have foreseen.
Consider this:
In the book, in 2004, storm chaser Sean Casey was perfecting the first version of his armored tornado intercept vehicle, the TIV, and contemplating a second-generation version that would have armored plating that extended to the ground to prevent winds from toppling it from underneath.
Fast forward...
Just four days before the May 31, 2013, El Reno tornado, Sean Casey's TIV2 became world famous after it was deployed into the center of an EF4 in Kansas and video of the event was widely disseminated by the media.
Just days before that, another EF5 monster had hit Moore, Oklahoma, scene of another F5 from 1999 that Svenvold covers fairly extensively in this book.
The John Fogerty/Creedence Clearwater Revival song alluded to at this review's outset--with its portent of death by storm--preceded a chapter on the adventures of chaser/scientist Tim Samaris, his son Paul, and chaser colleague Carl Young. In 2004, this trio was perfecting the science of placing monitors directly in the paths of storms. Svenvold notes somewhere near this section that as of 2006 (when this book was published) no chaser had ever died in a tornado.
Fast forward, again...
On May 31, 2013, all three were killed in the El Reno tornado.
And, as Svenvold and others predict in the book, talk of legislating tornado chasing would inevitably occur once someone died. And, indeed, that talk has begun.
As other reviewers here have noted, Svenvold's book is most entertaining and compelling when it gets down to the ostensible purpose of the book: to capture the essence of the chase, and to chronicle some of the stars of the field, inside and outside of the weather bureau. But Svenvold is, at heart, an essayist, and chasing turns out to merely be a springboard for more ambitious aims and big themes. These diversions from the chase path parallel Svenvold's assertion that most of storm chasing involves sitting still and waiting, and finding things to kill the vast time in between. The multiple chapters "in between" are kind of like that...
Svenvold's ambition is admirable, and he *does* have the guts to present a POV that won't and doesn't sit well with some readers, particularly the Red-State denizens he rather easily mocks--shooting fish in a barrel--but one does think he goes a little far when he starts criticizing their mix-and-match kitschy taste in furniture...
Along the way, Svenvold rather boldly and messily tries to wrench all of provocative arguments into place, kind of like charging into a storm (or a windmill) to find order in the chaos. One feels like he takes as circuitous a route to get to the point as storm chasers do in zig-zagging across the Great Plains in pursuit of their own epiphanies. Like the chasers, Svenvold just as often ends up in an empty space.
Svenvold can write like nobody's business, but in proving that he knows something about everything he often grows tiresome. He name-drops liberally, citing everyone from Aristotle to Ben Franklin to Wallace Stevens to Don DeLillo, covering everything from the history of The Weather Channel (a huge beneficiary of the weather privatizing policies of the Reagan administration) to the notion of the "sublime" as part of the epic story of the American Dream. Tornadoes as spectacle or goal, and storm chasing itself, are said to be a manifestation of this concept.
We are introduced to a Montana outcast named Mary Maclane--a kind of goth Emily Dickinson of the Plains--who wrote a scandalous and popular diary more than a hundred years ago. And even though she and her story are interesting, its inclusion feels like an add-on that Svenvold wanted to get into a book--any book.
Oddly enough, despite all the references literary and otherwise, Svenvold seems to avoid the most obvious one of all, Don Quixote.
He does call the fascination with tornadoes (including the proliferation of tornado videos) "tornado porn," or "torn porn," which is exactly what I was thinking recently as I became obsessed by the entracing videos of same that now pervade Youtube.
Even when he seems off the mark, Svenvold provokes thought, and I can't possibly fault an author for being ambitious. The opposite I could fault him for.
All in all, a rewarding effort.
--------
The review:
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks Like we're in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye...
(From the song "Bad Moon Rising," by John Fogerty, quoted on page 148 of Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America.)
If that quote stood in mere isolation--the expected throwaway lead-off quote in a book about tornadoes-- it would elicit little pause or comment.
But, like a lot of things in this book it's a pretty creepy portent.
Big Weather... in grand, wild, whirlwind fashion chronicles the Midwestern storm chase season during the meteorologically active month of May 2004, a month that saw the second widest tornado in history destroy the town of Hallam, Nebraska. It also provides a sprawling template for author Svenvold to wax philosophic on matters directly and not-so-directly related to the lure of the chase and to the mindsets of the denizens of the Great Plains, hearty and stubborn Red-State, Bible-thumping folk whose odd brand of faith seems to preclude ever building basements despite persistent disaster (one fellow chronicled in the book has his Moore, Oklahoma, house destroyed three times in barely as many years; and may have possibly had it decimated again in the recent May 2013 EF5 monster).
Svenvold begins and ends his tale in the burg of El Reno, Oklahoma, a town west of Oklahoma City and one of the most tornado-prone places on Earth. From there, the parallels between what Svenvold writes from the perspective of 2004 and this past May's (2013) El Reno monster (EF3/EF5, depending on the calculation)--the widest tornado in history--become eerily clear.
The El Reno tornado of May 31, 2013, was the grand climax of the year's storm season, one that saw successively more spectacular storms as the month progressed. In some ways, this spring provided a strange coda to Svenvold's book that he could not have foreseen.
Consider this:
In the book, in 2004, storm chaser Sean Casey was perfecting the first version of his armored tornado intercept vehicle, the TIV, and contemplating a second-generation version that would have armored plating that extended to the ground to prevent winds from toppling it from underneath.
Fast forward...
Just four days before the May 31, 2013, El Reno tornado, Sean Casey's TIV2 became world famous after it was deployed into the center of an EF4 in Kansas and video of the event was widely disseminated by the media.
Just days before that, another EF5 monster had hit Moore, Oklahoma, scene of another F5 from 1999 that Svenvold covers fairly extensively in this book.
The John Fogerty/Creedence Clearwater Revival song alluded to at this review's outset--with its portent of death by storm--preceded a chapter on the adventures of chaser/scientist Tim Samaris, his son Paul, and chaser colleague Carl Young. In 2004, this trio was perfecting the science of placing monitors directly in the paths of storms. Svenvold notes somewhere near this section that as of 2006 (when this book was published) no chaser had ever died in a tornado.
Fast forward, again...
On May 31, 2013, all three were killed in the El Reno tornado.
And, as Svenvold and others predict in the book, talk of legislating tornado chasing would inevitably occur once someone died. And, indeed, that talk has begun.
As other reviewers here have noted, Svenvold's book is most entertaining and compelling when it gets down to the ostensible purpose of the book: to capture the essence of the chase, and to chronicle some of the stars of the field, inside and outside of the weather bureau. But Svenvold is, at heart, an essayist, and chasing turns out to merely be a springboard for more ambitious aims and big themes. These diversions from the chase path parallel Svenvold's assertion that most of storm chasing involves sitting still and waiting, and finding things to kill the vast time in between. The multiple chapters "in between" are kind of like that...
Svenvold's ambition is admirable, and he *does* have the guts to present a POV that won't and doesn't sit well with some readers, particularly the Red-State denizens he rather easily mocks--shooting fish in a barrel--but one does think he goes a little far when he starts criticizing their mix-and-match kitschy taste in furniture...
Along the way, Svenvold rather boldly and messily tries to wrench all of provocative arguments into place, kind of like charging into a storm (or a windmill) to find order in the chaos. One feels like he takes as circuitous a route to get to the point as storm chasers do in zig-zagging across the Great Plains in pursuit of their own epiphanies. Like the chasers, Svenvold just as often ends up in an empty space.
Svenvold can write like nobody's business, but in proving that he knows something about everything he often grows tiresome. He name-drops liberally, citing everyone from Aristotle to Ben Franklin to Wallace Stevens to Don DeLillo, covering everything from the history of The Weather Channel (a huge beneficiary of the weather privatizing policies of the Reagan administration) to the notion of the "sublime" as part of the epic story of the American Dream. Tornadoes as spectacle or goal, and storm chasing itself, are said to be a manifestation of this concept.
We are introduced to a Montana outcast named Mary Maclane--a kind of goth Emily Dickinson of the Plains--who wrote a scandalous and popular diary more than a hundred years ago. And even though she and her story are interesting, its inclusion feels like an add-on that Svenvold wanted to get into a book--any book.
Oddly enough, despite all the references literary and otherwise, Svenvold seems to avoid the most obvious one of all, Don Quixote.
He does call the fascination with tornadoes (including the proliferation of tornado videos) "tornado porn," or "torn porn," which is exactly what I was thinking recently as I became obsessed by the entracing videos of same that now pervade Youtube.
Even when he seems off the mark, Svenvold provokes thought, and I can't possibly fault an author for being ambitious. The opposite I could fault him for.
All in all, a rewarding effort.
August 18, 2012
It baffles me why an author who obviously knows squat about weather would want to write a book about tornadoes. With the advent of the internet it became much easier to drive around after severe thunderstorms. Be in the right place and see a tornado, go to the wrong spot and get your windows shattered and your vehicle looking like it was worked over by a baseball bat as it gets pelted by large hail.
It seems like Svenvold had more fun watching storm chasers make errors in judgment than spotting tornadoes. He also needlessly goes off on tangents that have nothing to do with tornadoes and an entire chapter is devoted to global warming.
If the author spent as much time learning about weather as he did being a cynic he would have written a more readable book. Even if you are a weather enthusiast give this a wide berth. There are many other better books on the subject.
It seems like Svenvold had more fun watching storm chasers make errors in judgment than spotting tornadoes. He also needlessly goes off on tangents that have nothing to do with tornadoes and an entire chapter is devoted to global warming.
If the author spent as much time learning about weather as he did being a cynic he would have written a more readable book. Even if you are a weather enthusiast give this a wide berth. There are many other better books on the subject.
January 17, 2011
A sarcastic and often times cynical view of chasing weather in the Midwest. It seemed that the author had a very jaded and distrusting view of storm chasers, making them seem to be more of an unstable group of thrill seekers who bring a big chief attitude in interference to those studying the science of weather. The author did more of a literary memoir on his feelings rather than relying on facts and science, especially dwelling too much on the drama of partnerships and retelling personal stories that came across immature and unprofessional in a book meant to be taken seriously on the hobby. I was left feeling that the author held little regard for the chasers he met, and even less regard for mother nature. I have to wonder what his purpose was to even write the book, and felt sorry for the real people that he featured as the book did little for their image to be taken seriously.
March 3, 2025
I am not even going to try or use another's synopsis on this book. Book is a waste of time, much better weather books out there.
Writer is arrogant and lacks the ability to stay on topic. Jumps around in time way too much, tells half the story and does not give much compassion, just criticism. The biggest turn off was the whole coffee, cappuccino, expresso scene. So sorry while you are stopping in towns while following these nasty storms, they did not fulfill your needs. He also lacks in weather knowledge, could have learned a few more things before writing about a book with little knowledge on the subject.
Writer is arrogant and lacks the ability to stay on topic. Jumps around in time way too much, tells half the story and does not give much compassion, just criticism. The biggest turn off was the whole coffee, cappuccino, expresso scene. So sorry while you are stopping in towns while following these nasty storms, they did not fulfill your needs. He also lacks in weather knowledge, could have learned a few more things before writing about a book with little knowledge on the subject.
February 20, 2015
Big Weather is a poet's book about storm chasing, one written by a professional poet in fact, so it is not inherently about the science, the technology, or the politics of weather, despite the subtitle's focus on tornado chasing. Mark Svenvold tells the story of his decision to spend a month chasing tornados in Oklahoma, a plan which grew from his terrified first, tornado-free experience of an Oklahoma storm.
Had this book stuck to this story a bit closer, it would have been a stronger book. Partway through the book Svenvold covers a lot of basic storm structure science, but only in prose and with no handy diagrams. Had Svenvold committed to actually systematically providing enough basic meteorology to allow readers a solid understanding of how tornadoes work, with a few basic diagrams or labelled photos of storm cells, this would have been a stronger book. And, further into the book, Svenvold shifts to the economics and politics of weather, but with about as much committment as with the science and with his storytelling. There is a lot to like about Svenvold's book, still, but overall it is unsatisfying, because it tries to take on too many different threads without enough depth or development in any one of them. I got the feeling that Svenvold the Poet was trying to be something other than a poet, with a bit of travel writing, a bit of academic research and a bit of popular science, while the author's true voice, the one that talks about Yevutshenko in chapter 1 and waxes poetic about stuff in much of chapter 4, that voice needed to be brought out and developed to incorporate the things he was trying to say.
In short, I liked the various different threads he tried to weave, but I wish Svenvold had picked fewer and done more with them. The book jumped around too much and changed style too much. But, it does raise some interesting perspectives on weather and how we interact with it. I would recommend this book, but be prepared to google your own diagrams and information if you want to know more about how tornadoes work.
Had this book stuck to this story a bit closer, it would have been a stronger book. Partway through the book Svenvold covers a lot of basic storm structure science, but only in prose and with no handy diagrams. Had Svenvold committed to actually systematically providing enough basic meteorology to allow readers a solid understanding of how tornadoes work, with a few basic diagrams or labelled photos of storm cells, this would have been a stronger book. And, further into the book, Svenvold shifts to the economics and politics of weather, but with about as much committment as with the science and with his storytelling. There is a lot to like about Svenvold's book, still, but overall it is unsatisfying, because it tries to take on too many different threads without enough depth or development in any one of them. I got the feeling that Svenvold the Poet was trying to be something other than a poet, with a bit of travel writing, a bit of academic research and a bit of popular science, while the author's true voice, the one that talks about Yevutshenko in chapter 1 and waxes poetic about stuff in much of chapter 4, that voice needed to be brought out and developed to incorporate the things he was trying to say.
In short, I liked the various different threads he tried to weave, but I wish Svenvold had picked fewer and done more with them. The book jumped around too much and changed style too much. But, it does raise some interesting perspectives on weather and how we interact with it. I would recommend this book, but be prepared to google your own diagrams and information if you want to know more about how tornadoes work.
December 10, 2021
This book wasn't quite what expected. I really expected to this to be more exciting than it really was. The highlights are only 2 chapters that were actually about tornado interactions and the aftermath. Those chapters were really great and were fun to read. Another chapter was about a man who had survived 3 tornadoes in 6 years and lost 3 houses in that amount of time. The odds on that are staggering, and it was a very interesting chapter. There was also a chapter all about the history of The Weather Channel and how it came about. Very interesting. There was also a chapter about the insurance industry and how they work a little bit regarding natural disasters. The rest of the book had too many random chapters that didn't really have anything to do with chasing tornadoes. The author just seemed to go off on tangents totally unrelated to what I thought the book was about.
January 17, 2018
Before I mention the problems with this book I will say that severe weather obsessives like me will enjoy reading much of it. I learned a lot about the history of modern storm chasing and about some of the more famous chasers. But the book is disorganized and the author goes off on tangents way too much. Also the author presents himself as an intellectual, name dropping obscure philosophers, and consequently I can't overlook his many grammatical errors and the fact that he references a non-existent Gulf of New Mexico and even misspells Bob Seger's name. The book is not without merit but overall it is disappointing.
February 26, 2009
Somewhat interesting-as it describes the dreams of people who chase tornados(and lives of some who have been affected by tornados).
That is the good-The author is also condeceding to people who live in Tornado alley, as well as to a student at a college who go to tornado chasing. Plus a chapter on global warming seems to have little or no relevence to tornados.
That is the good-The author is also condeceding to people who live in Tornado alley, as well as to a student at a college who go to tornado chasing. Plus a chapter on global warming seems to have little or no relevence to tornados.
January 2, 2015
There were some interesting tidbits about how tornadoes and hail form but other than that this book is completely putdownable. This may be interesting to weather junkies but as I am not a member of that group I cannot speak with any certainty about that. Find something better to read, there are many choices.
October 12, 2011
I enjoyed the book. As a storm enthusiast I found his descriptions of storm chasing quite interesting. It showed some of the more negative aspects of storm chasing. At some points Svenfold adopts a cynical view towards storm chasing, but his anecdotes give a good characterization of chasing storms.
March 31, 2014
I got this book as a present since I am interested in the weather and will be spending vacation in the tornado belt. It was interesting to read about the tornados that the author got to chase and how they got their information to chase those storms. There was even a section on how the weather channel was formed. One good topic was global warming and the history of how it came about.
September 21, 2014
Well written, but he should have stuck with the human profiles of storm chasers and tornado survivors. In three of these chapters, he wandered far afield--and bored me. I kept getting English teacher urges to tell him to pick a thesis and tape it to his computer--and he's certainly bright and educated enough to know that for himself.
January 18, 2016
This is the author's first attempt at writing non-fiction after a string of fiction works, and it shows badly. This reads more like a failed attempt at a grand novel, light on science and a good narrative. Instead, it focuses on overwrought descriptions and silly analogies...if you're expecting an informative read, look elsewhere.
September 20, 2007
Like many books about weather, this one disappointed me. For some reason authors feel like that have to relate turbulent weather to turbulent events in society. If we can edited his social commentary out, the book isn't bad. With it...eh...I could pass.
January 8, 2008
Good book for weather geeks. A bit prone to tangents at times but an interesting look at an odd little sub culture.
August 10, 2010
Great book, very funny writer!
July 30, 2013
Intriguing topic but had a mixed reaction to the book. The writing is lovely (author is a poet laureate) but he never seems to get close to capturing any of his storm chasing subjects.
April 12, 2014
Wow, great book, and the insights indirectly related to weather were cool too!
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews