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There you are, beyond cell phone range, without having seen a weather forecast in a day or two, looking at the sky and trying to read what the next day will bring. Will it rain? Is it going to get windy?
Knowing how to read the weather is an important skill for Scouters and Eric Sloane’s Weather Book is a fine resource for developing your expertise. I refer to my copy (a small, well-worn, paperback found digging around in a used bookstore a couple of decades ago) regularly. The new printing available at Amazon
Sloane writes with a sense of humor and common sense, and generously illustrates what he says with his own drawings. Sloane explains the science of the atmosphere and the scientific basis of common weather folklore in a way that is both compelling and easy to understand without losing the reader in a forest of scientific jargon.
Spend an hour or two with Eric Sloane’s Weather Book and you’ll understand the workings of the atmosphere and be well on your way to becoming a reliable forecaster.
Available at Amazon
Our heads are often bowed down with the material burdens of life, but we know that all through the ages thinking people have found time to look upward and to seek peace and solace in the panorama of weather. Emerson called the sky the daily bread of his eyes. Ruskin called it almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity. Lincoln said he could not imagine a man looking up a the sky and denying God. These spiritual qualities of weather frequently outweight the adverse influences that rain and snow have on our daily lives. They are, to my way of thinking, important enough to be a part of any book about the weather.
This book may help the reader to learn how the forecast tomorrow’s weather; more important, it is hoped the book will give to many a new concept of weather, that it will explain the character as well as the mechanics of the sky and the atmosphere. Not everyone can be a meteorologist; but it is easy to be weather-wise, and the pleasure of being close to the weather is endless.
Eric Sloane in Eric Sloane’s Weather book
