The Weather Handbook: An Essential Guide to How Weather is Formed and Develops

by Alan Watts

The Weather Handbook is the essential guide to how the weather is formed, providing readers with the ability to look at the sky and interpret its signs, and combine this knowledge with information provided by professional forecasts to assess for themselves what the coming weather is likely to be.

This handbook has been the standard reference for almost 20 years for students on Day Skipper and Yachtmaster courses, and the handbook of choice for skippers and crew of cruising and racing yachts. It has now been completely redesigned for the third edition to be more user friendly, with new photos and updated explanatory text.

The book also addresses new sources of weather information that have exploded on to the market. There are countless websites and apps providing forecast data, and The Weather Handbook guides users in how to use and interpret this information for themselves.

'The perfect introduction to understanding weather' Practical Boat Owner

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Nature, Reference

160 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1994

Reviews

[Lindsey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I took a Meteorology course in college and it has been about 10 years, so I've lost some of the basics. So I want my "essential" weather guide to tell me about the basics. This book starts off decently with clouds, although some things were missing right off. My problem really begins on page 30, when the author never describes cyclonic and anticyclonic anywhere (I have a basic understanding of them still but come on), and throws isobars at you, without ever telling you ANYTHING about isobars, or much of anything about troughs or ridges. Nothing is really explained, so when the author begins talking about isobars bending, nothing really makes any sense, there are no pieces to put together. Perhaps I should just pull out my textbook from long ago to re-learn everything.

[Bill Buckley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of technical data but really interesting. Weather forecasting is a combination of computers, satellites and human effort.

[Maggie Gallagher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little more technical than I wanted, but still cool. Beautiful pictures, too.

[Les · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book, but it was technical and I would have to read it through several more times to get it to sink in.