Shopping CartExplorations: Weather and the Arts
On page 164 of The AMS Weather Book, Edward Lorenz is quoted as referring to the 1941 novel Storm, by George R. Stewart. This novel helped encourage many meteorologists of Lorenz’s generation to go into the field.
Keith C. Heidorn has a nice discussion of Storm on his Weather Doctor Web site, calling it “the best weather novel ever written” and saying that it was “the inspiration for a Lerner and Loewe song ‘They Call The Wind Maria’.” Storm is one of many books, mostly nonfiction, that Heidorn lists on his Classic Weather Books Web page.
Painters and other artists, of course, have been and continue to be inspired by weather. A good survey of weather in the visual arts is Stanley David Gedzelman’s The Soul of All Scenery: A History of the Sky in Art, which is available for free on the Gedzelman’s City College of New York Web site.
Bob Swanson, assistant weather editor for USA Today, is also a musician. He and Doyle Rice, weather editor, often include items about weather-related music in their Weather Guys blog. These items are collected on the blog’s Pop Culture page.
