In recent years, several weather books have gained some national attention. Probably the most well-known is "The Perfect Storm," but a lesser-known story that I would highly recommend to any weather enthusiast is a book called "Isaac's Storm."

This book tells the true story of the deadliest weather-related natural disaster in U.S. history, the Galveston, Texas hurricane of September 1900 - the anniversary of that storm is this weekend. The book's central character is a man named Isaac Cline, who was the head of the Galveston bureau of the National Weather Service. Like nearly all U.S. meteorologists at that time, Cline believed the Texas Gulf Coast was immune to a major hurricane strike. By the time he realized that Galveston was in the path of a hurricane with winds above 100 mph and a storm surge of 10 to 20 feet, it was too late. Between six and ten thousand people drowned in the flooding, including Cline's wife, and vast sections of the island of Galveston were scoured clean of man-made structures.

"Isaac's Storm" is a fascinating, well-researched, highly readable, true story that very realistically depicts the state of our understanding of hurricanes a century ago.