Search Results

This chapter examines the widely-held assumption that highly stressful and traumatic events are differentially remembered relative to events that are more affectively neutral or positive. This assumption is evaluated using data from a study of children's reports of the experience of a tornado that devastated the town of St. Peter, Minnesota, in March of 1998. The evaluation is multifaceted, featuring analyses of how much about the experience the children reported, the type of information they included, and the extent to which their reports were affected by the narrative style of their conversational partners, namely their mothers. It is shown that conversations about the tornado were longer than those about the nontraumatic events. Conversations about the tornado also had more breadth than those about the nontraumatic events. On the other hand, the level of detail provided about the traumatic and nontraumatic events did not differ. Similar patterns of relations between maternal verbal behavior and children's contributions were apparent for the tornado and the nontraumatic events.

The Introduction opens with two vignettes about recent tornadoes that struck Indiana and Illinois. For some Christians, the doctrine predestination resembles the capricious wrath of a twister: God elects certain persons for salvation while visiting destruction upon others. for other Christians, predestination is the rock of certainty—a doctrine of assurance in an unpredictable world. while most Catholic and Protestant thinkers have equated outright denial of predestination with atheism, they have disagreed mightily over whether God elects persons arbitrarily or based on some foreseen condition of merit or faith. This debate is the main focus of the book, which argues that predestination is the unacknowledged source of much American denominational division. The book further argues that predestinarianism has tended to work against sacramental understandings of Christianity in which grace is conveyed continually through ritual. The Introduction presents these arguments and previews the content of the six main chapters and Epilogue.

This chapter focuses on how the prisoners were able to create very fashionable pieces of hard rubber jewelry for their loved ones. Sources of hard rubber are discussed and the process for carving these items is outlined. The archaeological record is instrumental in providing the information necessary for interpreting the production of all the various types of jewelry created within the prison compound.

This chapter discusses the three important fluvial goddesses in Yoruban religion: Oya, Oshun, and Oba. They are the wives of Shango, who was discussed in the previous chapter. These goddesses are also associated with atmospheric phenomena; Oba is associated with wild clouds, Oya is associated with tornados, and Oshun is associated with gathering darkness.

A hotter climate means there will be more heat waves and heat-related illnesses, such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke, the leading causes of weather-related death in the US. Without mitigation, annual world-wide heat-related deaths may exceed 225,000 by 2050. Heat will spawn more extreme weather events such as severe thunderstorms, and tornadoes. Although the number of hurricanes may not increase, the moisture-laden air and warmer oceans will make those that do form more intense and deadly.

Chapter 3 traces the appearance of the first truly disastrous tornadoes as the new nation pushed westward into the Mississippi Valley during the nineteenth century. These calamities fueled an apocalyptic mentality among people of various religious groups, who regarded such events as the Great Natchez Tornado of 1840 as a sign of End Time tribulations. Later in the century, however, the emerging field of meteorology contributed to a Gilded Age cult of progress that presupposed a benevolent God and assumed that tornadoes could be explained and maybe even contained. Even a disaster as enormous as the St. Louis Tornado of 1896, which destroyed much of the city, was not enough to shake the optimism of some clergy and theologians, who thought that as the scientific mysteries of tornadoes were dispelled, fears of divine wrath in the storm would cease.

Chapter 4 shows how twentieth-century weather disasters helped force some of the nation’s leading theologians to question old assumptions about providence and natural events. Especially at mid-century, which is usually remembered for Cold War anxieties, the weather influenced reconsiderations of providence by such thinkers as Reinhold Niebuhr, Georgia Harkness, and William Pollard, who, in different ways, broached the idea of randomness or amorality in nature. Newspaper coverage of two catastrophic events—the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 and the Palm Sunday Tornadoes of 1965—likewise revealed rising religious ambivalence on the popular level. Thus, even as some Americans were defending the time-worn belief that all things happen according to a plan, others were contemplating a world of radical uncertainty and unpredictability.

This chapter discusses the breakdown and rebuilding of the electric grid in Potsdam in January 1998. It discusses how, unlike the focused, piercing devastation of a tornado, hurricane, flood, or earthquake, the breakdown of the grid took a week to evolve as it slowly, incrementally compressed the power grid past the breaking point. The heaviest accumulations covered the Seaway valley from its source at the eastern edge of Lake Ontario across a wide path north and south of the river all the way past Montreal. When the rain finally stopped falling, those lands were under more than four inches of ice. The chapter discusses various problems that people of the affected area had to face, and also discusses how power was restored in the region and the grid was brought back to normal.

In this chapter, the author reflects on how history could influence activism in Alabama in the aftermath of two disasters, “one natural and one manmade.” In the spring of 2011, tornadoes devastated communities across Alabama, including those where Latino immigrants live. Simultaneously, the state's Republican politicians introduced HB 56, the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act. Already suffering in communities devastated by tornadoes, the state's Latinos and Latinas now also feared attending public schools and could not easily do any business that required a contract. The author, an assistant professor of American studies at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, recounts how the students in his service learning class joined a multiethnic, multiracial group of more than 4,000 people who gathered at a symbolic site for an earlier civil rights movement: Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. His story demonstrates how service learning can contribute to students' new interest in civic engagement and activism.

The development of a record large El Niño event and its ensuing major effects on the nation’s weather over an eight-month period created a scientific event of major proportions. Key science-related questions that developed during El Niño 97-98 included: • Who was issuing El Niño -based climate predictions and for what conditions? • What kinds of weather conditions were caused by El Niño ? • What types of impacts were being projected as a result of the El Niño weather? • How accurate and useful were the El Niño -based climate predictions? • How accurate were the oceanic predictions relating to the development, intensification, and dissipation of El Niño 97-98? • Was the record-size event caused by global warming? Answers to such questions define the scientific information transmitted to the public, the scientific community, and decision makers during the event. This assessment focused on the scientific information that appeared during the period from May 1997 to June 1998, but it also included information that appeared a few months after El Niño ended (i.e., into early 1999), since these issuances reflect the thoughts and findings generated by scientists during the event. Topics assessed included: (1) the sources of the scientific information, (2) how the information was interpreted and by whom, (3) the accuracy of what was presented by different sources, and (4) the scientific issues that emerged, some of which involved disagreements and/or caused potential confusion for decision makers and the public. Most of the information assessed herein was extracted from the Internet, newspaper stories, and scientific documents published during the June 1997-June 1998 period. What scientific information relating to El Niño 97-98 was measured? We assessed the presentations of the physical descriptions of El Niño and ENSO and the predictions, the predictions based on El Niño conditions of future seasonal climate conditions as well as the resulting physical and societal impacts, the verifications of the seasonal climate predictions, and other, more general information about El Niño 97-98 that emerged, such as its magnitude in comparison to past El Niño events and its possible relationship to other conditions, such as global warming.

El Niño 97-98 will be remembered as one of the strongest ever recorded (Glantz, 1999). For the first time, climate anomalies associated with the event were anticipated by scientists, and this information was communicated to the public and policy makers to prepare for the “meteorological mayhem that climatologists are predicting will beset the entire globe this winter. The source of coming chaos is El Niño . . .” (Brownlee and Tangley, 1997). Congress and government agencies reacted in varying ways, as illustrated by the headlines presented in Figure 7-1. The link between El Niño events and seasonal weather and climate anomalies across the globe are called teleconnections (Glantz and Tarlton, 1991). Typically, during an El Niño cycle hurricane frequencies in the Atlantic are depressed, the southeast United States receives more rain than usual (chapter 2), and parts of Australia, Africa, and South America experience drought. Global attention became focused on the El Niño phenomenon following the 1982-1983 event, which, at that time, had the greatest magnitude of any El Niño observed in more than a century. After El Niño 82-83, many seasonal anomalies that had occurred during its two years were attributed, rightly or wrongly, to its influence on the atmosphere. As a consequence of the event, societies around the world experienced both costs and benefits (Glantz et al., 1987). Another lasting consequence of the 1982-1983 event was an increase in research into the phenomenon. One result of this research in the late 1990s has been the production of forecasts of El Niño (and La Niña) events and the seasonal climate anomalies associated with them. This chapter discusses the use of climate forecasts by policy makers, drawing on experiences from El Niño 97-98, which replaced the 1982-1983 eventas the” climate event of the century.” The purpose of this chapter is to draw lessons from the use of El Niño -based climate forecasts during the 1997-1998 event in order to improve the future production, delivery, and use of climate predictions. This chapter focuses on examples of federal, state, and local responses in California, Florida, and Colorado to illustrate the lessons.

Much has been said about El Niño 97-98, some of it profound and some not. Several of the key findings from this assessment are reflected in an excellent short summary published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in January 1999. . . . The 1997/1998 El Niño was probably the strongest in recorded history; it disrupted the lives of millions of people on all the Earth’s inhabited continents. Not all climate extremes and severe weather events of the period, however, can be directly attributed to the El Niño event. Further, not all its impacts were negative, and some regions that were expected to suffer were not seriously affected. (Obasi, 1999) . . . As the WMO found on a global scale, we have documented the profound impacts of El Niño 97-98 in the United States. But, perhaps contrary to conventional wisdom, the impacts in the United States were, in the aggregate, positive. Because El Niño shifted the geographical distribution of seasonal anomalies and because scientists were able to anticipate these shifts, many decision makers were able to profit from the early warnings to take compensatory actions. The accuracy of the predictions, and the successful use by decision makers of those predictions, offers the promise of the development of a more robust climate service in the United States. The remainder of this chapter summarizes the surprises, the lessons learned, and the legacy of El Niño 97-98. Once the rapid onset of El Niño conditions was detected late in the spring of 1997, forecasters successfully predicted the event’s strength and duration. The oceanic predictions reinforced the ensuing seasonal climate forecasts. The official seasonal outlooks issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the summer of 1997 skillfully predicted the fall, winter, and early spring 1997-1998 conditions in many parts of the United States many months in advance. The seasonal forecasts had an accuracy of greater than 50 percent for temperatures and of between 30 percent and 50 percent for precipitation, the highest levels of accuracy ever attained, a reflection of the benefits of the considerable research and ocean-monitoring efforts directed at the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) over the past twenty years.

El Niño 97-98 provided one of the most interesting and widely known climatic events of this century. It garnered enormous attention not only in the scientific community but also in the media and from the American public. El Niño developed rapidly in the tropical Pacific during May 1997, and by October “El Niño “had become a household phrase across America. Television and radio, newspapers and magazines pummeled America with the dire tales of El Niño during the fall of 1997 as the climate disruption battered the West Coast and the southern United States with storm after storm. Worried families changed vacation plans, and insurance executives pondered losses and raised rates. Victims of every type of severe weather blamed El Niño . After a winter filled with unusual weather, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared, “This winter’s El Niño ranks as one of the major climatic events of this century.” It was the first El Niño observed and forecast from start to finish. The event was noteworthy from several perspectives. • First, it became the largest and warmest El Niño to develop in the Pacific Ocean during the past 100 years. • Second, the news media gave great attention to the event, and El Niño received more attention at all levels than had any previous climate event. • Third, scientists were able to use El Niño conditions to successfully predict the climate conditions of the winter six months in advance. • Fourth, the predictive successes brought new credibility to the science of long-range prediction and, in general, acted to increase the public’s understanding of the climate and oceanic sciences. • Fifth, there were notable differences in how weather-sensitive decision makers reacted to the predictions, some used them for great gain, while others, fearing failure, did not. • Sixth, the great strength of El Niño brought forth claims that the phenomenon was the result of anthropogenic-induced global warming. This possibility was debated and added to the scientific-policy debates surrounding climate change. • Seventh, the net effect of the El Niño -influenced weather on the United States was an economic benefit, after early fears and predictions of great damages.

The Introduction opens with the story of the 1953 Worcester, Massachusetts, tornado, the deadliest in New England history, as a segue into the book’s central argument: in the tornado, Americans experience something that is at once culturally peculiar (the indigenous storm of the national imagination) and religiously primal (the sense of awe before an unpredictable and mysterious power). No nation has more violent tornadoes than the United States, where a frontier mentality, combined with an Enlightenment-born confidence in scientific progress, has perennially tempted residents to believe they can understand and master the weather. But efforts to unlock tornadoes’ secrets have exposed how little removed Americans are from their premodern ancestors in finding themselves at the mercy of the whirlwind. Americans thus encounter in the tornado something akin to what religion theorist Rudolf Otto called the numinous: an uncanny, uncontrollable, and awe-inspiring mystery.

Chapter 1 interweaves the story of the 1974 Xenia, Ohio, tornado (part of the infamous Super Outbreak) with background on the pivotal role of weather in the premodern and early modern history of religions. The storm god tradition, exemplified by the biblical Yahweh and other deities from across the world’s cultures, laid the conceptual foundation for later American interpretations of the weather. Medieval and early modern theologians drew on elements of this tradition in devising their more rationalistic doctrines of providence, but in so doing they bequeathed to later generations a tangle of logical difficulties. Among these was the question of what role, if any, chance played in the weather. To John Calvin, “chance” was a pagan notion, but excluding chance exacerbated the problem of theodicy, or why a benevolent God allowed deadly storms and other natural evils.

Chapter 5 turns to Oklahoma, ground zero of the most violent tornadoes on the planet, where an evangelical Protestant culture meets the frontiers of contemporary meteorological research. Deadly tornadoes in Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City, have made particularly raw the long-festering question of whether God controls everything that happens. But Oklahomans have also had to confront the converse problem of human complicity in disasters, especially in an era of climate change. Evangelical politicians from Oklahoma have had a disproportionate influence on climate policy in the Trump administration, which has denied the looming crisis of global warming, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. At the local level, Oklahomans have also had to reckon with the challenge of disaster preparedness, especially the funding of school storm shelters, in a state that often resists governmental “intrusion.”