Book Review by Maggie Woods | Philip's Guide To Weather Forecasting

Philip’s Guide To Weather Forecasting

“Fascinated by colourful
skies and magnificent
clouds? They are not just
there to admire — we can
tell a lot about the weather
simply by looking up...”

THE PHILIP'S GUIDE TO WEATHER FORECASTING by Storm Dunlop is an authoritative yet accessible resource that provides all the information you need to help you to understand, interpret and forecast the weather — including what causes certain weather conditions and how to recognise different clouds.

The British obsession with the weather is understandable when you think that we have very diverse weather conditions — from heat-waves and droughts to terrible thunderstorms and blizzards — and in recent years we have been experiencing quite extreme conditions.

This book looks at the origins of weather with a full range of fore-casting from professional forecasts and charts to satellite images and weather-watching. It is illustrated with more than 200 colour photo-graphs — some of fantastic cloud formations and multi-cell storms. There are also charts, maps, diagrams and satellite images that are ideal for the amateur forecaster.

The Philip's Guide To Weather Forecasting also includes detailed infor-mation about instruments you might use at home to assist you in making your own forecast and an explanation of depressions, anti-cyclones and hurricanes. It also looks at optical effects such as rain-bows, haloes and mirages and Parhelion — sometimes known as a mock Sun or sun dog — which is a bright spot often showing spectral colours that is created by light being refracted within hexagonal ice crystals.

You can learn about the Roaring Forties; the global circulation, meas-uring pressure, how to observe the weather, the Coriolis effect and about ice-crystal Cirrus clouds that are often drawn-out trails across the sky known as "mares' tails".

The Philip's Guide To Weather Forecasting is a brand-new, fully-illustrated and practical guide to weather forecasting that offers:

A comprehensive account of global and local weather | In-depth description of weather systems | Guidance on home meteorological stations | A full explanation of how to interpret observations.

• The Philip's Guide To Weather Forecasting by Storm Dunlop gives
you all the information you need to make your own weather forecast. It will be published on 11 February (2008) in paperback at an RRP of £9.99 and is available from all good bookstores or from www.philips-maps.co.uk.

Storm Dunlop has written many books on meteorology and astronomy. He is a former President of the British Astronomical Association and an established authority in the field of meteorology.

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