The Cross-Winds Rule
When upper and lower winds are moving at right-angles, a major weather change is imminent. Look at the low and high clouds in the time…
Tag: cirrus
How to Interpet the Weather Using the Jet Stream
What Are Jet Stream Ropes? The following is an excerpt from the book, The Secret World of Weather, by Tristan Gooley. Jet streams are snaking,…
Halos, Sun Dogs and Circumzenithal Arcs
What are those bright rainbow colours in the sky, if not rainbows? My thanks to Giel Spierings for the following email and permission to share…
What are Fallstreak Holes in Clouds?
Fallstreak holes form when a part of a cloud falls out, leaving a hole. This happens when part of a cloud made of very cold…
How to Tell If You Are Looking at a Storm Cloud
If we see clouds growing taller, it is a sign that showers and storms are more likely than days when the clouds are flat and…
Feedback from Michigan
My thanks to Tim Webb for reading my books and writing with some local feedback: I thought you may enjoy this photo. Contrails in west…
Clues Above Brighton Pier
Have a good look at the picture above. I took it during a night walk along the Brighton seafront. If I was planning to set…
22 Degree Halo and Contrail Shadow
My thanks to Alan Gibson, urbane forager and regular contributor to this blog, for another great image. In this picture we are looking at two…
How to Navigate Using the Upper Winds and Clouds
I have written in the past about the basics of using the weather to navigate. Here I’d like to offer a couple of tips to…
A Brief Introduction to Cloud Clues
Supercomputers churn mounds of data and give us a more accurate weather forecasts than our ancestors could manage. But there is something more satisfying about…
Weather Lore
Welcome to the page where I have collected a few weather lore sayings and laid out the meteorological truth, or otherwise, behind them. Breaking News:…
Mackerel Sky
Following some bad weather recently, I saw the beautiful ‘mackerel sky’ above. A mackerel sky can be used to forecast weather, but it is at…
Circumzenithal Arcs
My thanks to Simon Cadman for the following generous email and some great images of some sun dogs and the more rarely-spotted, ‘upside-down rainbow’, also…
More Beautiful Sun Dogs
My thanks again to Alan Gibson for sending over some great images. These are sun dogs or parhelia and parts of a “22 degree halo”.…
Cloudscapes and Weather Lore
I took this picture a few minutes ago. For those of you interested in these sorts of cloudscapes then here is a good tip for…
Venus in Cirrus
Venus and the brighter stars, like Arcturus, appeared shrouded in a veil this morning. This was not mist close to the ground – horizontal visibility…
Fire Rainbows
I was just ‘tweeted’ by Anne who had spotted what initially appeared to be an unusual light phenomenon appearing in some cirrus clouds. I think…
Mares’ Tails
A weekend of sailing has just passed, one that was full of meteorological kindness. Nature was generous in two ways over the weekend – perhaps…
The First Frost
The northerly winds were carrying high cirrus and contrails down towards the coast this morning. They have brought colder air, as forecast yesterday. This gave…
Three Winds
I took this picture a week ago. It shows the lower fair-weather cumulus clouds against the upper cirrus clouds. It is not at all unusual…
Contrails and Continents
This morning’s sun was a strong enough clue, but if we wanted to know which way was southeast then these aircraft contrails are pointing the…