JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Munch–that is the first thing that came to mind on seeing these maps from Willis Luther Moore’s Weather Maps Celebrating s Lecture on Storms and Weather Forecasts (“Delivered under the auspices of the Men’s Association of the Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church…Baltimore, Maryland, Monday, November 16, 1896, P.M.”) Others may not see it, but I do see “The Scream” in there, in America’s heartland, in glorious black-and-white. And screaming they should have been–that winter in January 1886 was brutal, calling for 30 below zero in places like the appropriately-named Jornada del Muerto in Texas. In any event the maps are really quite lovely, and not really “early” anymore for weather maps of such detail (these maps beginning to appear in the 1840’s and becoming pretty accurate placeholders of weather memory by the 1880’s.
