What is a Great Circle?
When I first learned about great circles, I found them to be one of the most eye-opening, head-scratching and strangely beautiful concepts in navigation. I…
Find out how to read water
Tag: clouds
The Colour of Water
The colour of water is determined by: A) What’s under it. B) What’s in it. C) What’s on it. D) And by light levels and…
Rayleigh Scattering
However clear the sky, however free from even the wispiest of clouds, the sky is never uniformly blue. It is always closer to white near…
BBC Winter Wonderland
I did a short piece for BBC Inside Out that was broadcast on Monday evening. It can be viewed via this link (within the UK,…
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…
The Difference Between Mist and Fog
Thank you to everyone who has come to my talks on How to Read Water recently. The morning after the Dartmoor talk, I took the…
Contrail Shadows
My thanks to Alan Gibson, author of the Urbane Forager blog and book, for sending me these great images of a contrail shadow. (Contrails are…
Joshua Slocum and the Birds
My thanks to Pertti Pesonen for reminding me of these passages in Joshua Slocum’s classic, ‘Sailing Alone Around the World’: On the 12th, some hundred…
