Rain or Shine
“Hot enough for you?” That’s the weather pleasantry
we hear most often in Houston, but in other places you could substitute “cold” or “windy” or “wet” for
the condition you’ve had enough of. No matter what it’s
like outside, we all have an opinion on the weather, and while
we may not always watch the news or sports, we invariably listen
to what the weather forecaster has to say.
Robert Henson ’81 pays more attention than most of us to the weather. His
childhood in the Great Plains metropolis of Oklahoma City exposed him to a lot
of wild weather. “I grew up fascinated by it,” he says. At Rice,
he completed an interdisciplinary major in meteorology and psychology, and he
credits professor of physics Arthur Few with giving him a strong basic grounding
in atmospheric science.
Following graduate school at the University of Oklahoma, where he studied both
meteorology and journalism, Henson joined the University Corporation for Atmospheric
Research in Boulder, Colorado, a consortium of universities dedicated to education
and research on earth systems. The organization also manages the National Center
for Atmospheric Research. There, Henson writes and edits publications on weather
and weather research and works on major weather research projects. He even pursues
the subject in his free time, writing articles and radio shows on weather and
photographing storms and other weather phenomena. With that kind of background,
it’s not surprising that Henson has written a fact- and anecdote-filled
book that may be the best layperson’s information source on weather since
Aristotle’s Meteorologica—and a lot more fun to read.
The Rough Guide to Weather (Rough Guides, 2002) opens with a general introduction
to weather in all its aspects—the atmosphere, seasons, wind currents, climate
zones, and worldwide weather patterns. After that, Henson moves on to the exciting
stuff—the kind of weather severe enough to leave its mark on our personal
and cultural histories. Thunderstorms, blizzards, fog, tornadoes, hurricanes,
floods, and drought all make an appearance, and Henson provides clear explanations
of how and why they occur—and why they occur in certain places.
Next, he provides a brief history of meteorology before describing what goes
into weather forecasting, how to make sense of forecasts and get the most out
of them, and ways to do your own forecasting. Following that is a primer on global
climate change that takes a look at global warming, greenhouse gases, the ozone
layer, and the effects on climate of wild cards like fluctuations in solar energy,
Arctic and Antarctic ice melt, and vegetation.
For travelers, folks relocating to new cities, or simply the curious, a lengthy
chapter on worldwide weather supplies brief but fact-packed snapshot guides to
weather conditions in dozens of countries and more than 150 cities around the
world. Included are more than 200 climate charts. And finally, there is a thorough
guide to weather resources, such as governmental agencies, universities, books,
and websites. Part of this last chapter covers weather and health-related issues.
Henson’s book is one of those rarities: as entertaining to read as it is
informative. Lots of sidebars relate interesting and often amusing details about
specific weather phenomena, incidents, and facts, such as the differences between
morning and late afternoon rainbows, the shape of raindrops, lightning strikes,
the origin of Groundhog Day, and how we came to name tropical storms as we do.
Photos, diagrams, and charts throughout help bring the weather to life.
In fact, as I write this, a tropical storm is bearing down on Houston and is
due to arrive later tonight and may turn into a hurricane. The skies are gray,
and the wind is picking up. Now what is it Henson says about tropical storms.
. . ?
Robert Henson also is the author of Television Weathercasting: A History (McFarland,
1990).
— Christopher Dow
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