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: cloudscapes
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…
How to Tell Which Way a Storm is Heading
There is a simple technique for working out which way a distant storm is heading. Just look for the ‘finger’. Quick description: There is a…
How Can I Tell If A Cloud Will Bring Rain?
Is it going to rain? What a popular question. The key to longer-term forecasts lies in studying changes in clouds and fronts over hours, but…
How to Forecast Weather with Contrails
Below is a short excerpt from the book, The Secret World of Weather, on how contrails can be used to predict changes in weather Contrails…
What are Lens Clouds? (Altocumulus lenticularis)
Lens clouds are saucer, lens or lentil-shaped clouds that form when wind blows moist air over mountains. Their formal name is Altocumulus lenticularis (lenticula means…
A Plein-Air Artists’ Manual
One of the great joys of natural navigation is that it intrigues such a wide variety of people, something it shares with food. We can’t…
The Foehn Fish
Another very interesting email from Prof. Otta Wenskus: Hi Tristan, I just read your paragraph on altocumulus lenticularis. Sadly, while Ifind them beautiful, my feelings…
The Clouds Map the Ground
On first glance these clouds may appear random. But they are far from it. They are making a map of the ground for us. With…
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…
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…
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:…
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…