The Nature of Violent Storms. (Science Study Series)

Rating:
Summary: Some great first-hand stories
Review: This book would be worth the price if only for several of the first-hand stories the author includes. For example, the author describes the only known case of a guy who rode out a tornado in his car and lived to tell about it. There are also a couple of hair-raising stories about ball lightning.

The guy who rode the twister was picked up with his wife in his Cadillac. He was carried 10 or 15 miles before the car was finally deposited in a corn field. Unfortunately, his wife was thrown clear of the car before landing and was killed, but the man lived to tell his story. One of the interesting things he reported was seeing balls of energy, undoubtably ball lightning, inside the tornado, but back in the 60's not much was known about this strange, atmospheric energy plasma. He said there were boulders the size of his head floating around and lightning would flash from one part of the twister to another. This guy gets credit for surviving the world's wildest roller-coaster ride.

The other two interesting stories were about ball lightning. A guy and his wife were watching TV in the middle of a storm somewhere in the midwest, Kansas probably, and suddenly a ball lightning comes out of the TV tube, flies across the room, hits the guy in the middle of his chest, and burns him to a crisp right in front of his wife. Pretty scary.

The last story I recall concerns a ball lightning that appeared inside an airliner. It started up near the cockpit and rolled down the aisle of the airplane, in full view of everybody, leaving a long scorch mark on the carpet as it went. It went the entire length of the aircraft until it got all the way back to the rear baggage compartment, where it finally exploded with a bang. Nobody was close enough to get hurt at that point and the aircraft landed without further incident. I'm glad I wasn't on that flight. Flying scares me enough as it is.

Anyway, the book would be worth it if only for the above stories, but there is also plenty of information about storms in general in this interesting little book.