Nancy Mathis is a Washington-area resident and former journalist whose first book, “Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado” is the true story of a massive storm that hit her native Oklahoma in 1999.
Why this storm and this book?
This storm was the most powerful storm ever recorded. At the time, there were University of Oklahoma professors, chasing around behind it with powerful Doppler radar on a flatbed truck. They clocked it at over 300 mph. Just to give you an idea – and really, there is way too much mathematics in meteorology – but a 300-mph tornado is nine times more powerful than a 100-mph tornado.
So Doppler radar is a real thing and not just a local TV weather gimmick?
This past year will likely set a record for the number of tornadoes. The National Storm Prediction Center has estimated 2,192 tornadoes for 2008, and the record was 1,717 in 2004. Usually there’s about a thousand twisters a year. There were about 125 fatalities in 2008, which is nowhere near the death toll that was routine 50 years ago. That decreasing death rate is thanks to the Doppler radar, which finally made it possible for the National Weather Service to really improve its tornado warnings.
What kind of wacky mail do you get from tornado-obsessed readers?
A lot of it asks whether I have gone on tornado chases or seen a tornado. I was a reporter in Oklahoma for more than 10 years, and I always covered the aftermath. I have never seen a tornado, never chased one and always just got there for the aftermath, which can just be incredible. Growing up in Oklahoma, I always had an interest in thunderstorms. You really spend your formative years underground, in the spring. I spent a lot of time in my grandmother’s cellar.
What is it about the weather that makes us all so interested?
The people who are interested in weather are totally interested in it. That was one of the fascinating things, how many people are just really into weather. … Weather is so fickle, chaotic and fragile – and yet, so powerful.
