Storm Author:George R. Stewart Storm is the fictional biography of an extra tropical storm born over the Pacific Ocean. Upon maturing, it strikes California, and its impacts there and over the rest of the United States during its twelve-day life provide the main focus of the novel. How the storm affects several particular individuals caught in the drama of the storm comprise ... more »the subplots of Storm.
Set in January 1935, the story begins with an introduction of weather conditions over the vast Pacific Ocean. The scene then shifts to the Junior Meteorologist working at the San Francisco Weather Bureau Office(the majority of characters are named by their job title rather than a formal name). As he prepares the synoptic weather map by plotting the station data reports and drawing the isobars, he notices a small cell of low pressure forming southeast of Japan. The Junior Meteorologist had been bestowing each new storm system with a girl's name, in part because he saw each with a unique personality as it spun its life across the globe. The game, which he secretly plays in his mind, allowed him more easily to think of a storm as "'Antonia' than 'the low pressure cell which was yesterday in latitude one-seventy-five East, longitude forty-two North'."« less