Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America

Big Weather? Big Waste!!!:
Skip this one. It's horrible. I bought it just before a long flight and didn't have anything else to read. "I chose poorly." What kind of author involves his political views and disdain for Christianity in a book called Big Weather? Well, Mark Svenvold does. For your money, you get a big dose of Svenvold's personal philosophies packaged with a backdrop of high brow cultural references. Who is this guy? And, why should we listen to his rambling pontifications? I thought I was buying a book about Big Weather!! Svenvold is also extremely insulting. He describes one fellow he met as having a receding hairline comparing it to a glacier retreating. Come now! Was that necessary? Oklahomans in particular get an extra helping of insults. Svenvold lets loose with unflattering comments about a number of individuals. Most of them were just answering his questions about weather. Here is a small dose. Svenvold describes a college student storm chaser: "She had an oval face, a smallish mouth, and large, wide cheekbones that made her look as if she were peering shyly and a little fiercely out from behind a tribal mask, if such a mask wore mascara." It gets worse. That is just one I turned to quickly. Save your money. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. I have no idea how it managed the ratings is has received. Still tempted? Pick it up in a bookstore and read pages 232-237 (soft cover). If that strikes you as an exciting read about "big weather" then go for it. This book is for you.

Supposed to be About WEATHER:
Big Weather? WRONG!!!! This guy covers philosophy, map making,religion, his philosophical ideas to the point of nausea, old world history, pages & pages about Mary MacLane, oh yeah, and almost as an afterthought there are some pages about weather & chasing. But still laced with his philosophy. NOT a book for anyone except maybe self styled "intellectuals"

Fascinating topic, ho-hum execution:
In "Big Weather," Mark Svenvold recalls the time he spent in 2004 tagging along with veteran storm chaser Matt Biddle. The book is meant to be about storm chaser culture and associated elements, but uneven storytelling mars what would otherwise be a very cool book. Svenvold is a poet-in-residence at Fordham University, and it shows. In some cases (such as Chapter 4: Catastrophilia), it shows a little too much. When Svenvold is talking about being on a chase, or the people who are part of and/or affected by chase culture, he's great. When he tries to get flowery, it bogs down the book. I'm sure there was a point to Chapter 4; I just wish he had gotten to it sooner, with a clear path to it. And that's the overall problem with "Big Weather." For a topic that is, at its essence, unpredictable, crazy, and hold-your-breath heart stopping, he doesn't always convey that. I know that there's a lot of waiting associated with chasing, but Svenvold made storm chasing seem downright dreamy. I think the book would have been better if he had stuck with the journalistic, straight-to-the-point style he used when describing different chase events. I don't agree with other reviewers that say he is anti-Christian, anti-Bush, or anti-other chasers. I think he was just trying to be objective while observing the people who not only live in Tornado Alley, but are also residents of the Bible Belt. Perhaps the book would have been less offensive if he had been more objective, but I don't think that's his style. One place where I did think he was offensive (or at least borderline) was his constant referral to the people in the chasing industry as "geeks" or "dorks." I wasn't sure if that was an in-joke he was repeating or if he was being purposely derogatory. I think, in a way, this was meant to be Svenvold's "expose" type book, just like recent bestsellers "The Nanny Diaries" or "The Devil Wears Prada," except, of course, he didn't try to gloss his experiences by hiding them in fiction. It might have been a more interesting read if he did. Overall, it's worth checking it out from the library. But there are better memoirs out there that are worth savoring and keeping.

Poetic prose, wide ranging topics:
Big Weather is a lot about weather and a little about weather, all at the same time. How come? Because Mark Svenvold can describe physical phenomena in prose approaching poetry, and the topic allows him to introduce the reader to multiple other venues. The title attracts those of us who need to deal with weather. I fly light airplanes and taught weather as a major chapter in aviation ground school class curricula. Even so, tornadoes are a fish pilots do not swim with. We race the other way, like herring trying to fly when the whales arrive to corral them with air bubbles. So on a daily basis, pilots need to know more about, for example, the Current Icing Potential on the ADDS Web, or the convective SIGMETS, which describe the wide range of turbulence generators. But whatever makes you open Big Weather, you will find, in the first paragraph of page one, the rich ability of a poet to describe the factual in impressionistic ways. A few pages later, you will meet Matt Biddle, his hero. And it keeps getting better. Want to know about Chaos? Svenvold will tell you about Lorenz, and then you can read James Gleick. His mention of Heisenberg might remind you that Werner was once asked if he had any questions for God. He responded "Yes, I will ask him to explain relativity and turbulence, and I think he will be able to explain relativity". Or, when Svenvold brings up Pliny the Elder, describing a vortex, you can pick up John Mc Phee's "Control of Nature" and read how Pliny dropped dead when Vesuvius erupted under his nose. Think tornadoes are all violence? Svenvold will connect you with their sublime elements, and with Dionysius Longinus, sublime's first champion. Science, art, science, literature, science, psychology, geography, history, philosophy. On and on it goes. Elmer Mc Curdy is another good yarn. Get that too.

Big Weather, Big Disappointment:
I am fortunate in that I did not actually spend money on this book. I do not know about the poetic aspects of the book, but I do know that the author treated many of the people in this book insultingly. I skipped around a bit thinking that perhaps only the beginning would be colored by condescension but remained disappointed. If you want a good book that exposes the relationships between big weather and the people who live through it read F5 by Mark Levine. If you want a good book about big weather read any book other than the one this review is about.