Book Evaluation Recommendation

I did enjoy reading this book, but I have to save I would not recommend it to any AP students unless they have a passion for serve weather. This book was good and was a great life story of how a man came from a small town in Michigan, to the most successful storm chaser in the United States. I would not recommend this book because it talks about serve weather and anyone that doesn't like to learn about serve weather would be bored reading this book

Book Evaluation Summary of the book

The book starts off with Reed Timmer's freshman year of college at the University of Oklahoma. He talks about his meteorology classes and how all colleges with meteorology courses the application rate jumped.This is because of the 1995 movie, Twister, with Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. He talks about his first couple storm chases and how they were busts, or failures to see any type of serve weather. He talks about seeing his first tornado. He then moves on to explain about his first successful chase on May 3, 1999, and experiencing the tragedy of that event.

Book Evaluation Best Chapter of the book

My favorite part of the book is the epilogue, because it talks about Reed intercepting a tornado in his armored vehicle, The Dominator. He created The Dominator to obtain unseen radar, windspeed, updraft, air temperature, and air pressure data. He wants to collect this data to help increase warning lead time for storms. He talks about his first radar intercept in Kirksville, Missouri.

Book Evaluation Author's tone

In chapter one when Reed and his friends are chasing a cyclic supercell through south central, Reed talks about his excitement for seeing his first tornado up close. He talked about he yelled and screamed at the storm like it was a living thing, his tone soon turned from excitement to a grave tone. He talked about how he was telling his friend Matt to get closer to the tornado, his tone was all of excitement until they hid under the freeway overpass and his friend Rick made Reed come to his senses and Reed became terrified along with the rest of his friends until the end of the chase. Reed and his friends were even more somber when they followed the storm into Moore and saw the devastation and destruction first hand 

Book Evaluation Ten important things that happened in the book

1.) May 3, 1999 Moore, Oklahoma tornado
2.) Hurricane Floyd
3.) October 9, 2001 Elk City, Oklahoma Tornado
4.)Narrowly avoided oncoming Tornado April 7, 2002
5.)June 24, 2003 Manchester, South Dakota Tornado
6.)Joined Cast of Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers
7.)May 5, 2007 Greensburg, Kansas
8.)Dominator 1 Finished 2009
9.)Earned PhD in meteorology from University of Oklahoma in 2010
10.)Dominator 2 finished 2011

Book Evaluation Two places mentioned in the book

In his sophomore year at OU a producer from the talk show Leez, asked Reed if he would go to North Carolina and intercept Hurricane Floyd when it made land fall, the show would pay for the trip in full. Reed and his friend Rick flew into North Carolina and took a cab to Wilmington on the coast.At the hotel they were trying to get a room at, Reed met a man named Ernest who offered to let Rick and Reed stay at his mobile home just off the beach. They rode out the storm and shot some footage, most of the good parts of the storm happened at night while Rick and Reed were asleep. 

Another place Reed talks about is his hometown, a suburb outside of Grand Rapids. He talks about studying for school, trapping and studying insects in the woods behind his house. He always took his sister back into the woods and climbed trees to research every insect he could find. His mother kept buying him books about insects, including the name what they eat and anything else he wanted to know. He even drew insects to pass time

Book Evaluation Two most important people or entries

The most important person in the book is Reed Timmer. When he was younger, his mother made his life dedicated to enriching his knowledge in school and music. In middle school he gained an interest in science,and began to compete in science Olympiads, and when he was 14 his love for the weather started to bubble up. He said on discovery channel that he started to want to pursue serve weather when he ran outside during a serve thunderstorm warning for his county in Michigan and got pelted by hail and broke his family video camera.

The most important entry in the book is the May 3, 1999 tornado outbreak. This was the first big storm "intercept" Reed Timmer ever had in his life. The outbreak occurred in Moore, Oklahoma, destroying the Regency Park suburb, and causing a total of $1.5 billion in property damage. Reed and his friends had never been on a storm, let alone seen an EF-5 tornado (the strongest tornado possible on the Fujita Scale). The tornado took a deadly turn and headed straight for Reed and his friends, as the took cover under a freeway overpass, the tornado turned last minute and headed for Moore. After the storm was over, Reed sold his footage to major news companies and became the worlds first "extreme" meteorologist.