BackStory

Mentioned on the Show:

• See images of the Coney Island Cosmorama of the Great Dreamland Fire
• Read War and the Weather by Edward Powers
• Learn about the history of San Diego’s rainfall and population growth over time

Outside Links

• A Funny or Die video on weather
• Artwork focused on extreme weather
• An 1880 patent for the “Method of Precipitating Rainfall”
• 10 villains who used weather as a weapon
• Matt Novak on weather control during the Cold War

Consulted

Batten, Frank with Jeffrey Cruikshank.  The Weather Channel: The Improbable Rise of a Media Phenomenon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

Cox, John.  Storm Watchers: The Turbulent History of Weather Prediction from Franklin’s Kite to El Nino.  Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.

England, Gary A.  Weathering the Storm: Tornadoes, Television and Turmoil.  Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.

Fine, Gary Alan.  Authors of the Storm: Meteorologists and the Culture of Prediction.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Fleming, James Rodger.  Meteorology in America, 1800-1870.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

Mergen, Bernard.  Weather Matters: An American Cultural History Since 1900.  Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2008.

Petterssen, Sverre.  Weathering the Storm: Sverre Petterssen, the D-Day Forecast, and the Rise of Modern Meteorology.  Edited by James Rodger Fleming.  Boston: American Meteorological Society, 2001.

Platt, Rutherford.  Disasters and Democracy: The Politics of Extreme Natural Events. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1999.