Excerpt: 'Weather Matters: An American Cultural History Since 1900,' by Bernard Mergen

Sept. 15, 2009— -- This book is the first real cultural history of weather in the United States, providing a comprehensive look at our obsession with the weather. The author maintains that weather has such a strong hold on the American imagination because it has been elevated to "quasi-religious" status -- it illuminates the paradoxes of order and disorder in daily life and it brings together disparate forces, such as scientific law, chance and free will.

Read a chapter from the book below, then click here to explore the "GMA" Library for more great reads.

The wind is blowing steadily at 70 miles per hour, the temperature is about 10ºFbelow zero, it's 2:30 in the afternoon, January 16, 2003, on top of Mount Washington,New Hampshire. I take a few steps away from the shelter of the observatory,and the wind shoves me forward like an automatic revolving door, onlymuch harder. There's no stepping back. I do a couple of glissades but go where thewind blows. Swinging around, I stumble back under the trellises that protect observersfrom windblown pieces of ice from the observatory tower. All the antennaeare covered with rime flags whose delicate filaments stretch out toward thewind. They look like white iron filings on a magnet. I'm standing at 6,200 feet inthe middle of a cloud. It is the beginning of my two-day EduTrip offered by theMount Washington Observatory.

The meteorological division of the U.S. Signal Service and its successor, theU.S.Weather Bureau, made observations here from 1870 to 1892. The observatorywas rebuilt with private funds and has operated as a nonprofit research and educationalinstitution since 1932. The observatory cultivates its mystique as theplace with "the worst weather on earth." Its great claim to fame is the 231-mile-per-hour wind recorded at 1:21 p.m. on April 12, 1934, which remains a world's Record for a surface station. Wind, cold, and, for a few hours a day, the view of the Presidential Range and the White Mountains are what the observatory is selling. In summer, tourists are allowed to drive up the narrow seven-mile road, but in winter EduTrippers ride up in a big Bombardier snowcat.

Bryan Yeaton, an energetic young man in a bright red parka, greets us in theparking lot at the base of the mountain. Yeaton does education programs for theMount Washington Observatory and produced The Weather Notebook, a nationallysyndicated radio show about weather that aired from1997 to 2005. He introducesthe other participants and staff. My fellow worst-weather seekers are aretired couple recently settled in New Hampshire for its outdoor activities andtwo guys in their forties from Massachusetts. One was a commercial fisherman,the other is a computer programmer; their trip is a Christmas present from theirwives. Ken Rancourt is a research meteorologist for the observatory who doublesas the Bombardier driver. His assistant, Wayne, looks like the actor Mark Wahlbergand mentions this resemblance when he is introduced. When he speaks, hereveals several missing teeth. The next day, as I am inching down the icy moun-tain on rented crampons, he speeds past me on a Flexible Flyer, providing an explanationfor his dental condition.

In winter the observatory and adjoining visitors center are usually coated withsnow and ice. The buildings resemble a Gothic wedding cake. The instrumentrooms and labs are a jumble of records, supplies, and humorous signs that initiatethe visitor into the culture of a research institution. "Big Empty Box" is attachedto what looks like an air-conditioner, and "Bimetal Box" contains supplies. Theseare insiders' jokes on stupid questions from visitors. Bryan begins our orientationwith similar "ice-breaking" jokes about being the "world's worst weather observer"and "world's highest paid weatherman."

He then explains why Mount Washington is important for meteorological observation. Its elevation makes it akind of permanent weather balloon, transmitting data visually and numericallytwenty-four hours a day. Its location exposes it to many of the storm tracks acrossNew England, and New England is the "exhaust pipe" of the nation's weather.1Later in the afternoon, sharing a chair with the observatory's mascot cat, Nin,I look at the logbooks. For almost seventy-five years, visitors have written commentssuch as "fine day," "high clouds," and "gale winds." Confined by nature tothe prosaic, the steady accumulation of such observation ascends to poetry. Iglance out the window. The sunset is a soft apricot line on the western horizon.Thus it is with the history of weather. The simplest daily occurrences of sun, wind,clouds compose its raw materials; a hand shielding eyes from the brightness, ora finger pointing to the sky, is the beginning of a weather chronicle.