EARTH DAY CONVERSATION: THE NEW AGE OF SUPERSTORMS!

Porter Fox

4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 23, 2025

​University at Albany 

Assembly Hall - Campus Center (2nd floor)

1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222​

Porter Fox, climate and travel writer, is the author of the new book, Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them (Sept. 2024). The book follows sailors and scientists around the world as they track and study sudden warming in our planet’s oceans and resulting amplification of hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, and freak weather on a scale never seen before.

Publishers Weekly said, “By combining gripping accounts of sailing voyages through raging storms with fascinating background on how climate scientists are studying extreme weather, Fox delivers a report that’s as entertaining as it is informative.” His previous books include The Last Winter (2021) and Northland (2018).

Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Office of Sustainability, Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, the New York State Mesonet, and the Honors College in observance of Earth Day.

Reviews of Category Five

“In order to learn about the superstorms that are reshaping everything we think we know about life on planet earth, Porter Fox turns to those who know the ocean best, the sailors and scientists who have spent most of their lives in conversation with sea. With muscular, captivating prose, he carries readers into the dead center of our ongoing planetary tumult, asking how does one survive the unthinkable and also what previously unimaginable worlds might these tempests make possible?”

-- Elizabeth Rush, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalists The Quickening and The Rising

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“By combining gripping accounts of sailing voyages through raging storms with fascinating background on how climate scientists are studying extreme weather, Fox delivers a report that’s as entertaining as it is informative…Filled with enlightening climate science and exciting adventure writing, this thrills.”

 Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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"Captivating and lively. . . Suitable for the general reader or the environmentalist, Category Five is essential reading for anyone concerned about extreme weather and its impacts."

--  Maren Ostergard, Booklist

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