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Book reviews

Wea

ther

– M

ay 2

011,

Vol

. 66,

No.

5

Ruth Binney David and Charles, 2010 Hardback £9.99208 pp ISBN 978-0-7153-3629-8

Wise Words and Country Ways Weather Lore

in science, having a degree in Natural Science from Cambridge, and it shows. It is intelligently written, but also fun, interest-ing and enjoyable.

The book is a collection of sayings, prov-erbs and superstitions relating to the weather and its patterns. Over centuries of history they have influenced the lives of gardeners, farmers, sailors and anyone whose livelihood or even safety depended on being able to foretell the weather. And all this was well before the days of scientific weather forecasts.

I was amazed to learn that the oldest records go all the way back to the Babylonians in the twelfth century BC. They wrote their observations on tablets, in cluding When a cloud grows dark in the sky, a wind will blow. There is also an interesting early version of Red sky in the morning… from the Romans.

Each piece of weather lore is explained with regard to its origins, whether it has any scientific basis and whether it actually works in practice. I am sure that not every reader will agree 100% with the author’s explana-tions, as some are open to a certain amount of interpretation, but on the whole it is well researched and written.

It is a great book to dip in and out of, but could equally be read in one sitting. It is split into logical chapters, separating the wealth of sayings into manageable chunks. One of the chapters, for example, is Around the Year, which moves through the seasons, another is Nature’s Signs which focuses on plants and animals.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and have found that not only are the say-ings interesting, some of them can be very useful!

DOI: 10.1002/wea.784This book on weather lore is one of the best I have seen. The author has a background

Robert HensonAMS Books, 2010 Hardback £26 (Amazon)241 pp ISBN 978-1-878220-98-1

Weather on the Air: A History of Broadcast Meteorology

This is an American book and its interest to UK readers is likely to be restricted to those of us with a particular interest in TV and radio weather broadcasting, who will find the comparisons between US and UK styles absorbing. It gives a thorough insight into broadcast meteorology, both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. The author was a student of meteorology and journal-ism at the University of Oklahoma and wrote his thesis on the broadcasting of severe weather warnings on local television so, although not a broadcast meteorologist himself, he has a strong interest in, and close connection with, TV weather.

The book is engaging and well written, with interesting asides and anecdotes. It starts with a whirlwind tour through the

history of broadcast met. and picks up on the fact that weathercasters in films are very often portrayed as either comedy characters or depressives! Successive chapters look at, among other things, the faces and voices of TV and radio weather, the forecasters behind the scenes, the technical and scientific aspects as well as developments over the years, and the responsibility of networks and weather presenters to convey messages to the public such as weather warnings and climate change issues.

All book review correspondence to: Helen Roberts, BBC Weather Broadcasting

House, Seymour Road, Plymouth, UK

helen.roberts2@bbc.co.uk

DOI: 10.1002/wea.786

Thundersnow Following January’s issue on severe winter weather which specifically mentions light-ning damage in Guernsey (Prichard, 2011), you may be interested in my recollections of a frightening event that took place in Guernsey at the end of November 2010.

On 26 November, the weather charts showed slack areas of low pressure covering most of the UK with fronts over western England running north–south in a cold northerly airstream. The weather in Guernsey during the day, though cool, was

lovely and sunny for early winter, but fur-ther north over the UK it had already turned much colder with areas of snow moving south. There was one such area of snow showers moving south over Wales, which by late afternoon had crossed the Bristol Channel and was then over southwest England. By sunset I observed that the sky was becoming cloudier from the north, and the radar showed precipitation continuing to move south into the English Channel. Winds during the early evening were very light from the west and temperatures were still well above freezing.

By 8pm, the air was very still and rather menacing with quite frequent lightning to the west and very deep rumblings of thun-der. Within twenty minutes it was snowing very hard and suddenly there was a tremen-dous lightning bolt accompanied by an explosive crack of thunder. A large upstairs windowpane was blown into the house and the house was plunged into darkness with snow and glass all over our hallway. The lightning bolt had struck a property some 100 metres across a field to the west, caus-ing it to catch alight with many thousands of pounds worth of damage.

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