Freaks of the Storm: From Flying Cows to Stealing Thunder: The World's Strangest True Weather Stories [Paperback]

Randy Cerveny (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 2005

In the course of his numerous talks and presentations to college and grade school students, civic clubs, and nursing homes, climatologist Randy Cerveny found that people of all ages are fascinated by the "unusual"—and he seized on that fascination to tell them about strange weather. Now, in his first book, the rest of us can learn of real, documented stories such as these: Odd occurrences of chickens losing all their feathers during tornadoes (so-called "chicken plucking"); Strange stories of finding lightning victims who have been completely stripped of all of their clothes (through a process known as "the vapor effect"); Weird stories of how past powerful hailstorms have both led to the ending of one war—and the complete prevention of another; Bizarre uses of weather—such as the strange contraption called a "windwagon" that literally "sailed" nearly 500 miles from Kansas to Colorado; Each chapter in Freaks of the Storm encompasses the oddities of a specific type of weather, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, lightning, and hail. The author also divides specific conditions into a set of categories associated with the overall phenomena.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fish falling from the sky. Tornadoes plucking chickens. Lightning welding an unfortunate soldier into his sleeping bag when it struck the zipper. Weather is not only powerful and dangerous (as we've seen all too clearly of late) but just plain strange. This compendium of the weird drawn from climatologist Cerveny's database describes over 500 incidents, from lightning strikes to hurricanes, blizzards to dust devils. Cerveny groups the incidents by type of weather and then by type of occurrence. He gleefully jumps from the past (lightning burning the rings of six gold coins into the skin of a 19th-century victim) to the present (a young woman temporarily blinded when lightning struck her tongue stud), with little attempt to explain how weather works. This book is good for a quick read in a spare moment, but without any narrative to drive it, it turns into a mind-numbing procession of bizarre facts. But bring on tales of cross-shaped hail and a heat wave that roasted a town from 70 degrees Fahrenheit to 140 degrees in a matter of minutes: Cerveny is here to remind us that if you need something interesting to discuss, you can indeed just talk about the weather. Agent, Andrée Abecassis. (Jan. 9)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In October 1947, in Marksville, Louisiana, hundreds of fish were falling from the sky. In November 1915, in Great Bend, Kansas, a tornado picked up five horses that landed unhurt a quarter mile from their barn. During a hurricane in 1938 along the eastern seaboard, residents discovered chickens with their feathers completely plucked by the wind. In Udall, Kansas, in 1955, a local barber was thrown out of bed, through a window, and into the street. He did not wake up. Cerveny, a professor who specializes in weather and climate, drew on his database of 8,000 recorded events to explain these occurrences. There are chapters on tornadoes, lightning, hail, rain, hurricanes, snow, wind, dust devils, and water spouts. He chronicles the oddest weather extremes (136 degrees in El Azizia, Libya, in 1922, and 129 below zero at the Russian research facility in Antarctica in 1983). The official world's record for a one-minute rainfall is 1.23 inches on July 4, 1956, in Avondale, Maryland. Cerveny's stories will captivate readers, or frighten them, or maybe a little of both. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (December 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560258012
• ISBN-13: 978-1560258018
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #879,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For weather buffs and lovers of oddities, March 3, 2006

By 

Elizabeth A. Root (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Freaks of the Storm: From Flying Cows to Stealing Thunder: The World's Strangest True Weather Stories (Paperback)

Cerveny has organized his book into sections of types of weather oddities, e.g. hurricanes, hail, tornados, with additional sections at the end for extremes, and one odd weather story for every state in the United States, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. There are numerous small photographs and other illustrations throughout. The book doesn't have narrative flow, but most parts are pretty gripping. Fascinating though it is to read that some people have survived being picked up by a tornado and spun around in the center, I don't think I'll try it.

The sections on specific types of weather usually have thirteen parts, "lucky" thirteen being safety measures. One can hope that people who think that strength of character is sufficient protection from extreme weather will learn a little sense. Made me try to remember where my portable radio is!

Obviously, weather buffs will eat this up. It is also a great book for anyone who like collections of oddities from such "fortean" authors as Charles Berlitz - the advantage is, these are much more likely to be true. Cerveny includes some legends, biblical stories and credible reports, although he is careful to specify when something is considered to be official. He notes that although "ball" lightening has not been scientifically observed, most experts agree that the large number of sightings indicate that it must exist.

It is also an interesting book for picking up and thumbing through at odd moments. I think I was most struck by the case of a PINE plank that was driven through an IRON girder by a tornado. How is that even possible?!

I was torn between giving this a 4 or a 5. Cerveny could do with reading a little more broadly - 1757 was not the Middle Ages in Germany (p.85). Citations are often giving a rather general terms without precise dates or pagination.

There is an extensive bibliography as well as a detailed index.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Collection of weather oddities..., August 24, 2006

By 

K. L Sadler "Dr. Karen L. Sadler" (Freedom, Pa. USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Freaks of the Storm: From Flying Cows to Stealing Thunder: The World's Strangest True Weather Stories (Paperback)

I enjoy reading and learning about weather. In all my science classes, I never got much instruction about how weather works...even in physics. So now I am pursuing learning about it for my own curiosity and protection. Being deaf in an area which occasionally sees tornadoes and the end parts of hurricanes, which can be devastating here because of flooding, I have no way to hear the sirens they blare when approaching bad weather occurs. Unfortunately, this is a major problem for most deaf people, and no one seems to be doing anything about it. The only person who died two years ago when PIttsburgh got clobbered by 3 hurricanes in rapid succession, was a deaf man who did not know the area was flooding. This happens on a regular basis.

Anyway, I could see that this book was less about weather and more about the odd things that happen in bad weather. The book explains where a lot of old sayings come from, and the possible/probable reasons for 'raining fish' and other such things. This book had a lot of information in it I had read before in more serious books, but there were some good stories in it also.

This isn't the book you want if you are serious about learning about weather. Like I said, the author who is a weather researcher, gathered up all these stories especially in our country about weather. I am sure in every country and language, there are similar stories to be told about horrific weather...the U.S. is unique in some ways for having to bear the brunt of the Atlantic hurricanes. I am sure there are unexplored places in Russian where there may be weather phenomena we are not familiar with...as well as interesting stories from the people who inhabit such places. It would have been interesting to get more information from other countries.

The writing is so-so. Definitely not on par with Erik Larson's Issac's Storm, which I think is a classic of this genre.

Karen Sadler

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From freak hailstones with horns and colored snowflakes to rainfalls of frogs, May 20, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Freaks of the Storm: From Flying Cows to Stealing Thunder: The World's Strangest True Weather Stories (Paperback)

Any interested in weather and its changing impact on human lives will find FREAKS OF THE STORM: THE WORLD'S STRANGEST TRUE WEATHER STORIES a compelling presentation. From freak hailstones with horns and colored snowflakes to rainfalls of frogs, climatologist Randy Cerveny uses his database of some 8,000 recorded strange weather events to provide a lively survey of the many forms of strange weather. Even leisure browsers with little usual interest in weather will find it a fun survey.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch