Don't Bet with Mother Nature! Can You Survive Storm Chasing? An Interactive Survival Adventure by Elizabeth Raum

If you think you can outwit Mother Nature, think again.

But if you love wild storms of all types, you are in the right place. North America is probably one of the best places for observing storm phenomena, with tornadoes, hurricanes, flash floods, and blizzards galore. But if you have no experience with tornadoes, think twice aoout driving storm-chasing vehicles for your summer job!

If you are a meteorology student who is fascinated by big storms, you need to experience them. But first you must to survive them!

In Elizabeth Raum's Can You Survive Storm Chasing?: An Interactive Survival Adventure (You Choose: Survival) (Capstone Books), you get to take on extreme storm conditions and try to live to tell the tale. There are many ways storms like tornadoes, blizzards, flash floods and super-storm hurricanes can win, and only a few ways to survive by your wits. And you get to learn how you DO that!

You've always been amazed by weather. In high school you read books about weather and watched the Weather Channel, and when it's time for college you chose Central Michigan University' meteorology program. You have one more year of college when you spot a flyer on the college bulletin board.

SUMMER JOB OPENING

WANTED: VAN DRIVER FOR WILD TORNADO TOURS!

Your new boss Steve tells you, "We find them and get as close as we can. But safety is important, too. With this equipment we can track storms and avoid getting hurt!"

They head for Minnesota, where there is a supercell forming. It's a big one!

Steve orders you to pull over in a good spot to watch the storm go by, but s1uddenly a wall cloud forms which begins rotations and a funnel cloud appears, twisting and turning and heading your way. While the rest of the group run for the empty field, Phil asks for time for one more picture.

You tell him "thirty seconds," but by that time you have only two choices--run for the open field beside them or for the shelter of the big-box building supplies warehouse. You choose to sprint for the shelter of the building and crawl under the nearest counter. You miss seeing the tornado up close and personal, and sadly you'll never get a chance to see another one, since Steve had not yet told you that long-span roofs tend to collapse in tornadoes. Yikes!

But don't dispair! You still have a chance to save yourself from a mega hurricane storm surge that has you ascending to an attic or seeing your car turn into a submarine in a flash flood.

Not every storm chaser makes bad choices, however, and in addition to cliff-hanging prose, Elizabet Raum's book offers good advice on how to be prepared for disastrous weather, whatever and wherever it may be. There's also quite a bit of substantial learning about extreme weather as well in this middle-readers' delight in the tried-and-true format of choose-you-own-ending books. With built-in information about staying safe in weather emergencies, case histories, an appendix with a safety quiz, glossary, bibliography, and informational web sites and index, middle readers will find this one both a page-turner and a guide to surviving "the big one."