Reading Wave Patterns – A Challenge
Watch the video above and study the patterns in the water. How many different wave patterns can you spot? What causes them and what do…
Tag: Patterns
Patterns Made by Heavy Rain
After heavy rain, water flows down any gradients. As it runs it gathers flotsam – leaves, husks, twigs – and this flows down with the…
How to Spot Subtle Patterns in Water
To spot subtle patterns in water, look where dark and light reflections touch each other. On calm days, the surface of water can appear still,…
What Caused These Patterns in the Snow?
Study the photo above, taken in Finnish Lapland, and see if you can work out how these patterns in the snow formed. For the answer,…
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,…
Surface Patterns Reveal Water Depth
Whenever waves meet shallow water, the patterns change. We can use these new patterns as clues to the depth of water. It doesn’t matter the…
What is a Double Frost?
A double frost forms when a layer of frost forms on top of an earlier frost. If the conditions are right for frost to form…
How to Use Your Hands to See Underwater
When we look at water angles are important. Looking across the water, at shallow angles, we see mostly reflections – the colour of the water…
Clues and Signs in Nature: Northern and Southern Hemisphere
I receive quite a few emails asking whether my books are relevant for readers in the Southern Hemisphere. The answer is ‘yes’, but only if…
How To Tell Which Tree is Older?
Which is the older of these two large trees? Clue: there are a few ways we can age trees, including one related to natural navigation.…
The Art of Perception in Nature
Take a good look at this photo before reading on… Did you spot it? We notice anomalies, colours or shapes that don’t ‘fit’ – that…
How to Read a Tree
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER THE AMAZON BESTSELLER THE OFFICIAL INDIE NO.1 BESTSELLER WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE MONTH Do two trees ever appear identical? No, but…
The Meaning of Ice Patterns
If we look closely at ice we will often find patterns and patterns in nature always have meaning. In the photo above there is an…
How to Spot Patterns in Calm Water
If you are trying to work out what calm water is doing, it is sometimes tempting to feel like nothing interesting is happening. There are…
Using Snow and Snow Shadows to Navigate
We can navigate using both snow and the absence of snow, zones known as ‘snow shadows’. There are two types of snow shadow, those caused…
Fast Recognition and Optical Illusions in Nature
Our brains are pattern-recognising machines. This is true everywhere, but not least in nature, where it honed these skills over millions of years. Bird calls,…
The Sorting by Sea Currents
Sea currents sort objects according to size, shape and weight. There is a documented case of left Wellington boots from a lost container washing up…
Tracking Tractors
Was this tractor heading towards us or away from us? Spoiler Alert 🙂 Tractors gain more traction with a ‘backwards’ herring-bone tread on their tyres.…
Ripples, Reflections and Patterns
It can be difficult to see detail in the surface of calm water. To work out what the water is doing, look at the places…
New Book Cover Preview!
The cover of my new book, How to Read Water, has now been unveiled. Hope you like it! More information about the book and how…