Weather Science

The weather is the foundation of our daily lives. It’s a staple of small talk, the app on our smartphones, and often the first thing we check each morning. Yet behind these quotidian interactions is one of the most expansive machines human beings have ever constructed - a triumph of science, technology, and global cooperation. But what is this "weather machine" and who created it?

It is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of all the world's water. Yet this is the first audiobook to tell the story of rain.

Tornadoes are funnel-shaped clouds that can cause massive destruction on the ground. Their winds can swirl faster than 260 miles per hour! In addition to factual information, youngsters will learn about how such extreme weather affects the lives of people in areas where these atmospheric storms are common. Using clear wording, Gail Gibbons explains how tornadoes form, the scale used for classifying them, and what to do in case one should be near you.

An astonishing transformation over the last 20,000 years has seen our planet changed from a frigid wasteland into the temperate world within which our civilization has grown and thrived. This dynamic episode in our planet's history, right at the close of the Ice Age, saw not only a huge temperature hike but also the Earth's crust bouncing and bending in response to the melting of the great ice sheets and the filling of the ocean basins - dramatic geophysical events that triggered earthquakes, spawned tsunamis, and provoked a series of eruptions from the world's volcanoes.

April 27, 2011, marked the climax of a superstorm that saw a record 358 tornadoes rip through 21 states in 3 days, 7 hours, and 18 minutes. It was the deadliest day of the biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history, which saw 348 people killed, entire neighborhoods erased, and $11 billion in damage. But from the terrible destruction emerged everyday heroes, neighbors, and strangers who rescued each other from hell on earth.

In 1934, hundreds of jobless World War I veterans were sent to the remote Florida Keys to build a highway from Miami to Key West. The Roosevelt Administration was making a genuine effort to help these down-and-out vets. But the attempt to help them turned into a tragedy. The supervisors in charge of the veterans misunderstood the danger posed by hurricanes in the low-lying Florida Keys. The hurricane that struck the Upper Florida Keys on the evening of September 2, 1935, is still the most powerful hurricane to make landfall in the US.

A comprehensive catalog of the most devastating and deadly events-natural or man-made-in human history. If you follow the news it can seem like injury, sickness, and death are now constant, inescapable occurrences that threaten us every second of every day. But such catastrophic events - as terrible and frightening as they are - have been happening for as long as mankind has walked the Earth.... and even before. From ancient volcanoes and floods to epidemics of cholera and smallpox to Hitler's mass killings in the 20th century, humanity's continued existence has always seemed perilous.

Beyond the sports and weather chatter and silence that characterize many male conversations, there is often brokenness. Emptiness. Shame. Have you ever been pushed into a men's group because someone said it was the right thing to do? In Bond of Brothers, Yoder calls disappointed, disenchanted, and lonely men to authenticity. To rediscover joy, to find satisfaction, by finding out what real male friendship and relationship is all about.

January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next the sky exploded in a raging chaos of horizontal snow and hurricane-force winds. Temperatures plunged as an unprecedented cold front ripped through the center of the continent.

Taking listeners from the melting Alaskan permafrost to storm-torn New Orleans, acclaimed journalist Elizabeth Kolbert approaches this monumental problem from every angle. She interviews researchers and environmentalists, explains the science, draws frightening parallels to lost civilizations, and presents the moving tales of people who are watching their worlds disappear.

In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline. Yet those wind-torn hours represented only the first stage of the relentless triple tragedy that Katrina brought to the entire Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama.

Let's face it, we can't control every aspect of our lives, and the fact is a lot of things we stress about are out of our direct control. The ancient philosophy of Stoicism still stands the test of time and is still practiced in society today all over the world. This is the art of living in true happiness, as stoic principles guide us to live in harmony and flow with life's many challenges.

Tim Flannery's international best seller The Weather Makers changed minds and hearts about global warming. We Are the Weather Makers is a concise and revised edition that allows listeners of all ages to learn the facts about climate change. In this passionate book Tim Flannery writes about cyclones and droughts, about coral reefs and polar bears, about wind energy and nuclear power. He reminds us that climate connects us all, from the Arctic to the Outback. And our climate is influenced by how we choose to live - how we use our fuels, our water and our land.

Kids will explore why the weather is constantly changing in this fun, rhyming audiobook about the weather.

Most people associate storms and other big weather with death - with the kind of force that makes each of us wonder about life, time, and the nature of our surroundings. Some people go out looking for bad weather or go to places where they're likely to encounter it. Others have the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, the stories in Storm have more to say than that.

From the time he was a small boy in Vermont, Wilson Bentley saw snowflakes as small miracles. And he determined that one day his camera would capture for others the wonder of the tiny crystal. Bentley's enthusiasm for photographing snowflakes was often misunderstood in his time, but his patience and determination revealed two important truths: No two snowflakes are alike; and each one is startlingly beautiful.

In its 2001 report on global climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations prominently featured the "Hockey Stick", a chart showing global temperature data over the past 1,000 years. The Hockey Stick demonstrated that temperature had risen with the increase in industrialization and use of fossil fuels. The inescapable conclusion was that worldwide human activity since the industrial age had raised CO2 levels, trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and warming the planet.

Bill Ayers was born into privilege and is today a highly respected educator and community activist. In the late 1960s he was a founder of the militant activist group the Weather Underground. Living on the run, stealing explosives, and hiding from the law, Ayers was involved in the defining moments of his generation: the Days of Rage, SDS, the Black Panthers - and the explosion that killed his beloved comrade, Diana Oughton.

In Tracking Weather, the Brite Star Kids learn about the Brite Star Weather Station and how the people who work there do their jobs and keep the community informed about the changes in the weather. They meet the individual who does the weather forecast and are able to see the instruments used.

Kids will learn about the important tools a meteorologist uses to predict the weather in this fun, rhyming audiobook.