The sky grows dark. Lightning flashes. Thunder booms. Soon a wailing siren fills the air. It's a tornado! With wind speeds up to 300 miles per hour, these dangerous storms destroy everything in their paths. Readers can learn about history's biggest, deadliest tornadoes from around the world.

"Describes the worst tornadoes in history, as well as formation, scale, and disaster tips"--Provided by publisher.

"Describes history's biggest and most destructive tornadoes from around the world"--

Water rushes out to sea out of nowhere. Suddenly, huge waves come crashing inland. It's a tsunami!

Wind blows dry, tall grass. A storm brews. Lightning strikes the ground, and soon, flames spread across the grassland. It's a wildfire!

One of the earliest sources of humanity's religious impulse was severe weather, which ancient peoples attributed to the wrath of storm gods. Enlightenment thinkers derided such beliefs as superstition, but in America, scientific and theological hubris came face-to-face with the tornado, nature's most violent windstorm. In this groundbreaking history, Peter J. Thuesen traces the primal connections between weather and religion in the United States. He shows that tornadoes and other storms have repeatedly drawn Americans into the profoundest of religious mysteries and confronted them with the question of their own destiny--how much is self-determined and how much is beyond human understanding or control.

Explains the causes and characteristics of tornadoes and scientific advances in storm prediction.

A guide to tornado formation and lifecycle also covers such topics as forecasting, wind speeds, tornado myths, tornado safety, risks, and records, along with accounts of the deadliest tornadoes in the United States.

The saga of the greatest tornado chaser who ever lived: a tale of obsession and daring and an extraordinary account of humanity’s high-stakes race to understand nature’s fiercest phenomenon from Brantley Hargrove, “one of today’s great science writers” (The Washington Post). At the turn of the twenty-first century, the tornado was one of the last true mysteries of the modern world. It was a monster that ravaged the American heartland a thousand times each year, yet science’s every effort to divine its inner workings had ended in failure. Researchers all but gave up, until the arrival of an outsider. In a field of PhDs, Tim Samaras didn’t attend a day of college in his life. He chased storms with brilliant tools of his own invention and pushed closer to the tornado than anyone else ever dared. When he achieved what meteorologists had deemed impossible, it was as if he had snatched the fire of the gods. Yet even as he transformed the field, Samaras kept on pushing. As his ambitions grew, so did the risks. And when he finally met his match—in a faceoff against the largest tornado ever recorded—it upended everything he thought he knew. Brantley Hargrove delivers a “cinematically thrilling and scientifically wonky” (Outside) tale, chronicling the life of Tim Samaras in all its triumph and tragedy. Hargrove takes readers inside the thrill of the chase, the captivating science of tornadoes, and the remarkable character of a man who walked the line between life and death in pursuit of knowledge. The Man Who Caught the Storm is an “adrenaline rush of a tornado chase…Readers from all across the spectrum will enjoy this” (Library Journal, starred review) unforgettable exploration of obsession and the extremes of the natural world.