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British Weather Disasters
Book Reviews Weather Disasters. Ingrid Holford, David & Charles, Inc., North Pomfret, Vermont, 1977, pp. 127. Price $11.95.
British
The temporal extent of history in the British Isles never ceases to overawe me as I sit in an area that, only a trifle over a century ago, was occupied by a neolithic culture. However, this is often compensated (if not totally negated) by a sense of amusement over the British notion that their pair of islands. at any given moment of time, contains just about everything worth considering. I find it difficult to read this book without a strong feeling that I am looking through the wrong end of a telescope. The last decade in Colorado has afforded as many weather disasters, to all appearances, as the last century in England and, if the casualty lists are smaller, it is undoubtedly because of this very frequency of occurrence. To be sure, we have had no counterpart of the great fire of London, but it was narrowly averted in early 1969 when a grass fire, driven by winds gusting above 160kph, was halted only a few meters from a line of old frame houses on the edge of Boulder. With a mean altitude of close to 20OOm, Colorado certainly has no history of Naval disasters nor of storm surges from the ocean, but nothing in the entire book is comparable to the rainfall intensity of the Big Thompson flood of 1976, with something around 35 centimeters of rain in a few hours. Fatalities from snow, cold and avalanche are an annual occurrence. Visitors from Florida who spend the winter here. regularly comment that they have experienced more hurricane force wind in Colorado than in years of living in hurricane country. Accordingly, it is easy to view this book with a patronizing air as something that should be restricted in its distribution entirely to Britain, perhaps like the inevitable tourist guide to a small, undistinguished English village. Yet to do so is really to underestimate the book. There is little question that it is difficult to read with full comprehension the first time through. The author has assumed that the reader is fully aware of the location of each bit of named geography in the Isles. However, for various reasons, maps are eventually included that locate a sizable fraction of the points referenced. Alternatively, a forewarned reader can get a suitable atlas and put it next to him before starting to read.
,911
This point aside, the book is really fun. The author truly understands meteorology to a depth that makes it possible to explain relatively complex notions in simple, non-technical English. She writes smoothly, lucidly and literately. With admirable insight, she has reconstructed past weather situations long predating the daily weather map to make clear the sort of interaction of human foolishness and adverse weather that can turn chance fire into the Great Fire of London, or an afternoon’s stroll into the mountqins into the loss of a dozen lives. She speaks on quite a deep level to the fallacy that man has mastered environment. One could wish that she had researched more thoroughly the all too brief account of the London smog of 1952; it is the one disaster of direct concern to readers of this journal, and even makes it appear that the word “smog” was coined in that year. The section, totalling little more than a page, closes with the somewhat fatuous remark that “Perhaps the word smog will eventually only be used to describe that one particularly disastrous occasion of 1952.” Make no mistake; the description of the meteorology involved in the 1952 affair is as lucid as the rest of the book. However, it is difficult to read the writings of John Evelyn from the mid-seventeenth century and believe that the health of Londoners was not impaired long before 1952. It is difficult to read the fantasy of Robert Barr, “The Doom of London,” and believe that he had not experienced something very like the “killer smog” prior to the turn of the present century. Coming closer to the present, the opening scene of “Prufrock” scarcely describes a pure water fog, and particulate loadings of in excess of 1 mg me3, probably corresponding to a visibility of the order of a kilometer in the total absence of fog, are still occasionally experienced. I am personally unaware of a good narrative history of the episode of 1952. It should undoubtedly be written. It is unfortunate that the author of this book felt that such an undertaking rated less space than the November 1971 motorway pile-up on the Ml. Nevertheless, for the general reader, particularly the Anglophiles in our midst, the volume is probably well worth the cost. It is entertaining light reading, and it will give anyone a sense of the degree to which the weather is still our master. JAMESP. LODGE, JR.
British
The temporal extent of history in the British Isles never ceases to overawe me as I sit in an area that, only a trifle over a century ago, was occupied by a neolithic culture. However, this is often compensated (if not totally negated) by a sense of amusement over the British notion that their pair of islands. at any given moment of time, contains just about everything worth considering. I find it difficult to read this book without a strong feeling that I am looking through the wrong end of a telescope. The last decade in Colorado has afforded as many weather disasters, to all appearances, as the last century in England and, if the casualty lists are smaller, it is undoubtedly because of this very frequency of occurrence. To be sure, we have had no counterpart of the great fire of London, but it was narrowly averted in early 1969 when a grass fire, driven by winds gusting above 160kph, was halted only a few meters from a line of old frame houses on the edge of Boulder. With a mean altitude of close to 20OOm, Colorado certainly has no history of Naval disasters nor of storm surges from the ocean, but nothing in the entire book is comparable to the rainfall intensity of the Big Thompson flood of 1976, with something around 35 centimeters of rain in a few hours. Fatalities from snow, cold and avalanche are an annual occurrence. Visitors from Florida who spend the winter here. regularly comment that they have experienced more hurricane force wind in Colorado than in years of living in hurricane country. Accordingly, it is easy to view this book with a patronizing air as something that should be restricted in its distribution entirely to Britain, perhaps like the inevitable tourist guide to a small, undistinguished English village. Yet to do so is really to underestimate the book. There is little question that it is difficult to read with full comprehension the first time through. The author has assumed that the reader is fully aware of the location of each bit of named geography in the Isles. However, for various reasons, maps are eventually included that locate a sizable fraction of the points referenced. Alternatively, a forewarned reader can get a suitable atlas and put it next to him before starting to read.
,911
This point aside, the book is really fun. The author truly understands meteorology to a depth that makes it possible to explain relatively complex notions in simple, non-technical English. She writes smoothly, lucidly and literately. With admirable insight, she has reconstructed past weather situations long predating the daily weather map to make clear the sort of interaction of human foolishness and adverse weather that can turn chance fire into the Great Fire of London, or an afternoon’s stroll into the mountqins into the loss of a dozen lives. She speaks on quite a deep level to the fallacy that man has mastered environment. One could wish that she had researched more thoroughly the all too brief account of the London smog of 1952; it is the one disaster of direct concern to readers of this journal, and even makes it appear that the word “smog” was coined in that year. The section, totalling little more than a page, closes with the somewhat fatuous remark that “Perhaps the word smog will eventually only be used to describe that one particularly disastrous occasion of 1952.” Make no mistake; the description of the meteorology involved in the 1952 affair is as lucid as the rest of the book. However, it is difficult to read the writings of John Evelyn from the mid-seventeenth century and believe that the health of Londoners was not impaired long before 1952. It is difficult to read the fantasy of Robert Barr, “The Doom of London,” and believe that he had not experienced something very like the “killer smog” prior to the turn of the present century. Coming closer to the present, the opening scene of “Prufrock” scarcely describes a pure water fog, and particulate loadings of in excess of 1 mg me3, probably corresponding to a visibility of the order of a kilometer in the total absence of fog, are still occasionally experienced. I am personally unaware of a good narrative history of the episode of 1952. It should undoubtedly be written. It is unfortunate that the author of this book felt that such an undertaking rated less space than the November 1971 motorway pile-up on the Ml. Nevertheless, for the general reader, particularly the Anglophiles in our midst, the volume is probably well worth the cost. It is entertaining light reading, and it will give anyone a sense of the degree to which the weather is still our master. JAMESP. LODGE, JR.