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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where is Isaac sent to set up a weather station in Texas?

2. The barometer reading Joseph takes the night before the storm is ____________.

3. What does Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli discover?

4. Where does Isaac give a speech about weather to a packed crowd?

5. Growing up, Isaac loves to read books by ____________.

Short Essay Questions

1. What is Galveston like in 1900?

2. What does Captain J. W. Simmons of the Pensacola experience after his ship leaves Galveston the morning of the hurricane?

3. Why does Isaac believe that no storm could harm Galveston?

4. Why does hail become an obsession of Isaac's?

5. What is the butterfly effect?

6. What does Isaac compare the feeling to that he has on the night before the hurricane?

7. How does Moore treat the weather forecasting being done in Cuba?

8. How was weather recorded before the creation of the weather service?

9. What does the Galveston newspaper advertise as being the chic look for the summer of 1900?

10. How is Isaac a reflection of the country at this time?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is both surprising and tragic about how the residents of Galveston are first unaware of the storm and then revel in its onset? At what moment does the city seem to realize that this is going to end very badly?

Essay Topic 2

Larson ends the book with a description of what is standing today in the place where St. Mary's Orphanage once stood. What story in contained in that one simple image and why is that a poignant image to end the book?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss the use of descriptive and figurative language used throughout the story and the effect they have on the narrative.

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