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“That is exactly right – the Galveston Hurricane in 1900. It killed thousands of people. I was just thinking after this latest round of tornadoes what a storm-torn continent we are. But that was the worst of them. There has never been a hurricane like that to hit the United States and essentially to remove a community, destroy a generation living there. Isaac Cline was the name of the climatologist who was responsible for trying to forecast the storm. I mean we are not good at forecasting storms now but back then the whole concept of predicting storms was incredibly new and poorly understood. And so Isaac called the storm wrong. About 8,000 people, including his wife, died in the hurricane. Erik Larson uses this story, in part, as a way of exploring the evolution of an essential science.” Read more...
The best books on Science in Society
Deborah Blum, Science Writer
