The Big Cloud

Book excerpt: Our culture is addicted to weather: hourly forecasts, apps, radio, TV channels, alerts, warnings, and watches. And understandably—our food, clothing, livelihoods, and, increasingly, safety are tied directly to the weather and climate change. In The Big Cloud, photographer Camille Seaman stands in front of tornados, at the edges of lightning storms, and in pelting hail under pitch-black skies to capture supercells and mammatus clouds in their often sublime and terrifying splendor. In these awe-inspiring photographs, Seaman's work is a potent reminder that there is no art more dramatic, in scale or emotion, than that created by nature. Big Cloud includes an introduction by award-winning New Yorker science writer and author Alan Burdick (Out of Eden, Why Time Flies).