Why I read the book: Spontaneous pickup from the new book section at the library.

What the book was about: Cerveny is a professor of meteorology who collects accounts of strange weather. He gives a series of anecdotes relating to many weather conditions — rain, wind, snow, tornadoes, hurricanes, heat, etc. There are stories of fish falling from the sky, red snow, flying cows and killer fog. There’s also a chapter on extremes of each type of weather.

What I liked about the book: It was educational and interesting most of the time. Some of the stories were very strange and amusing.

What I didn’t like about the book: Cerveny is a professor, not a writer. His style is choppy and redundant in places, but doesn’t really take away from the book. Some of the stories are given as reported with no attempt to explain what caused the strangeness.

The most interesting quotes:
• If a herd of cows did become airborne [as reportedly happened in a tornado], they would probably refer to it as “the herd shot around the world.”
• Tropical cyclones along the Atlantic coast were markedly weaker on weekends than during weekdays [due to the build up of industrial pollution during the week — this weakens the hurricane].

Further Comments: He quotes experts who say Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus was probably due to lightning and Elijah was taken up, not by God but by a tornado.

Among other things, I learned ...

— About the herd of Kansas cows that became airborne in a tornado and were ever after known as "the herd shot round the world."

— About the expert who had determined that Paul's experince on the road to Damascus was consistent with a lightning strike — but was still miraculous.

— About the Chinese government who still, in 2005, fires rockets into storms to change hail into rain.

— That if a car is going through water that is moving only ten miles an hour, every foot of water depth displaces fifteen hundred pounds of the car's weight. That means that only two feet of moving water moving at ten miles an hour can float virtually any car.

— That hurricanes along the Atlantic coast are markedly weaker on weekends than during weekends due to the build-up of pollution during the week.

— That hurricanes (cyclones) in the Northwest Pacific basin are named by the primarily Asian nations that rim the area. While there are a few men's and women's names, the majority of the storms are named for flowers, animals, birds, trees or even food. (I can hear it now — My Aunt Tillie was killed in Hurricane Strawberry Shortcake.)

— About January 22, 1943, when the temperature in Spearfish, South Dakota went from -4F to 45F in two minutes.

— About frozen fog, tiny ice crystals suspended near the ground, that are known as pogonip.

— About the expert who claims that Elijah's translation was probably the world's first recorded tornado casualty.

Cerveny isn't a great writer, but the stories are interesting and educational.