Coringa is a coastal city of India which had a population of about 20,000 in 1789. In December, there was a strong wind, “seeming like a cyclone.” The tide rose to an unusual height and the wind increased to great fury from the northwest. The unfortunate inhabitants saw three huge waves coming in from the sea while the wind was blowing with its greatest violence. The first wave brought several feet of water into the city. All the able-bodied ran for higher ground or climbed to the rooftops to keep from drowning. The second wave flooded all the low parts of the city and the third overwhelmed everything and carried the buildings away. All the inhabitants, except about twenty, disappeared. In cases of this kind, a warning less than an hour in advance would have saved the lives of thousands, but disasters like this were repeated here and in other parts of the world dozens of times before the hunters, trackers and forecasters of hurricanes learned to cheat these terrible storms of their toll of death and injury. Progress was slow in the nineteenth century, which saw some of the world’s worst storm disasters. In 1881, three hundred thousand people died in one typhoon on the coast of China. We now come to the stories of the men who tried to do something about it—the storm hunters. At first, early in the nineteenth century, the hunters were men engaged in some other work for a living. They put in their spare time gathering information, getting reports from sailors who had survived these terrible storms at sea and from landsmen who had seen them come roaring across harbors and beaches, to lay waste to the countryside. We go with some of them through these awful experiences. Then, after the middle of the century, first under Emperor Napoleon III of France and later under President Grant in America and Queen Victoria in England, storm hunting became a government job and spread slowly around the world. Here we see a bitter uphill battle. The hurricane proved to be an enormous whirlwind, hidden behind dense curtains of low-flying clouds, tremendous rains, and the thick spray of mountainous seas torn by earth-shaking forces of the monster. Its mysteries were challenging. Out of this work a warning system grew, and slowly the losses of life were reduced from thousands to hundreds, and then to dozens. We go with the storm hunters into Congress and the White House, to argue about it. Then we come to World War II and the desperate need for information while submarines attack shipping and hurricanes threaten airfields and naval bases.