Book excerpt: Where can you find the worst weather on earth? The surprising answer in Tying Down the Wind is: everywhere! You don’t need to climb Mount Everest or voyage to the icy desert of Antarctica to witness both the beauty and the destructiveness of weather. The same forces are at work in your own backyard. Tying Down the Wind takes readers on a voyage of discovery through the atmosphere, a swirling ocean of air that surrounds and sustains life. The journey begins in a sunny New England woodlot and ends atop the polar ice of Antarctica—where we learn, remarkably, that the two extremes are not so different. What triggers changes in the weather? How are tornadoes, thunderstorms, heat waves, and blizzards all related? Tying Down the Wind supplies the answers, and invites you to experience the excitement of the world’s worst weather in the comfort of your own home...or car. Drawing on the author’s experiences at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, Tying Down the Wind revisits the devastating Northeast Ice Storm of 1998, takes readers on a snow-blind walk through a Berkshire blizzard, and describes the impact of a 54,000- degree lightning bolt just a few yards away.