The story of extreme weather doesn’t begin with heat waves, floods, fires, or even the air that carries this change to our lives. It begins with the oceans. Oceans create weather, just as oceans have shaped the arc of human civilization and the genesis and the growth of nations throughout history. The secret to understanding the frightening effects of climate change, award-winning writer Porter Fox contends, is in understanding how major changes in the oceans radically affect climate, hurricanes, droughts, and most of the geophysical fallout of global warming. To understand how we can live through the coming age of superstorms, scientists have followed the lead of a college drop-out-turned-maverick sailor and storm-chaser; a Romanian refugee turned BBC radio host turned circumnavigating mapmaker, Jimmy Cornell; and an audacious new attempt to study storms above as well as deep below the ocean depths, using drones.

Category Five revolves around Fox's time shadowing these mavericks and seeking out myriad scientists, oceanographers, and weather forecasters who are working with them, all in an attempt to understand and forestall — and just maybe harness — the awesome power of our oceans. Along the way, Fox takes us through the history of oceans and climate, and back into his own youth as the son of a celebrated boat builder — aboard a boat his father constructed.