conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Understand, Discover, Identify with the genre: Science & Math, Earth Sciences?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Weather For Dummies'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.. Start with the sentence 'Weather For Dummies
  Coming as it did during the Great Depression, the long drought drove hundreds of thousands of families into a desperate migration from the Plains to southern California and other states'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Weather For Dummies
  Coming as it did during the Great Depression, the long drought drove hundreds of thousands of families into a desperate migration from the Plains to southern California and other states. The great agricultural losses deepened the nation's economic crisis and worsened the misery. The Dust Bowl experience alerted the country to watch out for long-term climate shifts as well as short-term weather extremes.
  On April 3, 1974, a strong storm system crossed through the nation's midsection with a set of conditions that was perfect for breeding tornadoes. Before it was over 17 hours later, on April 4, a total of 148 tornadoes had roared across 13 states. The death and destruction ranged from the Great Lakes southward through the Ohio and Tennessee valleys and into Mississippi and Alabama. Among the twisters, 48 of them were killers, claiming a total of 315 lives. Hardest hit was the little town of Xenia, Ohio, where in a matter of minutes an F-5 tornado killed 33 people, injured 1,600 others, and destroyed 1,300 buildings.
  Six of the tornadoes of the super outbreak were in the highest F-5 category, and scores of others were F-4 tornadoes. For all the damage and destruction, tornado specialists credit this swarm with giving them some important advances in their science. This outbreak gave them their first close look at microbursts, for example, which proved to be so dangerous to airplanes. For more on microbursts, see Chapter 8.
  A small but incredibly powerful 1969 hurricane, Camille was a Category 5 with wind gusts estimated at nearly 200 miles per hour. Camille came roaring out of the Gulf of Mexico and into Pass Christian, Mississippi, on August 17. The storm surge was measured at 24.6 feet, so high that one survivor was washed clear over the town without hitting utility poles, trees, or buildings.
  The storm moved inland and turned toward the northeast, plowing into Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia with torrential rains of as much as 31 inches in central Virginia. Camille killed 256 people and destroyed more than 5,000 homes. Among the dead were 113 people in Virginia, a coastal state that saw its worst natural disaster come not from a hurricane out of the Atlantic but from the inland west.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: This chapter takes a look at this very old tradition of hand-me-down weather signs from the critters that share the house, the barnyard, and the wilderness with the likes of you and me. The idea was that these "lower forms" of animal life were more sensitive to weather changes than brutes like you and me. There may be something to that idea, in a way, but to be honest, as accurate predictors of weather, these "signs" don't hold up too well under close scrutiny.
  Some of the weirdest old animal signs of weather change have to do with cats around the house. My guess is they were thought up and passed around by people who spent too much time indoors.
  When cats sneeze, for example, it was considered a sign of rain. It was also a sign of rain when a cat scratches itself or scratches a log or a tree. If a cat lies on its head with its mouth turned up, that meant a storm was on the way. A cat washing her head behind the ear was considered a sign of rain, although in other places, cats washing themselves were considered signs of fair weather.
  Go figure. I don't know about you, but if there is a bigger mystery in the world than tomorrow's weather, it is understanding the behavior of my cats!
  Dogs haven't done as well as cats in the weather prediction business. At least, that's my explanation for the fact that there aren't very many old weather signs around that give much forecasting credit to dogs. Like most animal weather signs, the behavior of dogs most often was described as signs of rain.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last paragraph.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: With American Photo, CNN, the New York Times, Popular Science, and the World Meteorological Organization among his credits, Jim Reed is recognized as one of the finest severe weather photographers working today. A professional storm chaser, Jim has spent the past decade documenting more than 100 record-setting storms including blizzards, floods, tornadoes, and the direct strike of four major hurricanes. Enjoy!