Noctilucent Clouds
A guest blog post today, from John Pahl: If you were to ask me what my favourite cloud would be, I wouldn’t hesitate: it has…
Tag: clouds
Which Way Are We Looking?
Two questions today. I took this picture yesterday. Which direction are we looking? And a tougher one: what sign is there in this picture that…
How to Navigate with Rainbows
Many people believe that a thing must be either beautiful or practical. But nature brims with examples that manage both. Rainbows are pretty, but they…
Red Sky in the Morning, Shepherd’s Warning
Latest News: The Secret World of Weather book contains hundreds of weather signs. As the shepherds warn us, a red sky in the morning is…
Signs in the Sky – New Animation!
Here is the second in the short series of short animations. Hope you enjoy! (If you missed the Water one, you can find that on…
How to Capture the Sun
I’m just back from Kincaldineshire. A big thank you to the extraordinary Charlie and Caroline Gladstone for inviting me to run a couple of mini…
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…
A Cherry Blossom Map at the Hepworth Wakefield
My thanks to everyone who came to my talk at the Hepworth Wakefield gallery last week. And to the University of Sheffield team for organising…
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…
Wayfinding with the Polynesian Voyaging Society
Something a little different today – a guest blog. I am very grateful to Hye Jung Kim and all the team at Project Wayfinder for…
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…
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:…
How to Cross a Park Like an Explorer
Sherlock Holmes may have felt the mist of the moor under his deerstalker on occasion, but he had a distinct preference for indoor clues over…
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
I recently took the opportunity to do a little natural navigation exercise on Dartmoor. There was heavy rain and plenty of mist and fog. I’ll…
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…