The Emergence of Numerical Weather Prediction: Richardson's Dream

Lewis Fry Richardson dreamt that scientific weather prediction would one day become a practical reality. Before his ideas could bear fruit several advances were needed: better understanding of the dynamics of the atmosphere; stable computational algorithms to integrate the equations; regular observations of the free atmosphere; and powerful automatic computer equipment.

By 1950 advances in all these fronts were sufficient to permit the first computer forecast to be made. Over the ensuing fifty years progress in numerical weather prediction has been dramatic. Weather prediction and climate modelling have now reached a high level of sophistication.

This book tells the story of Richardson's trial forecast, and the fulfilment of his dream of practical numerical weather forecasting. It includes a complete reconstruction of Richardson's forecast, and analyses in detail the causes of his failure. This will appeal to everyone involved in numerical weather forecasting, from researchers and graduate students to professionals.

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The Weather Wizard's Cloud Book - Predict Weather by Reading the Clouds

We've always wanted to be able to predict the weather with some accuracy by looking at the clouds. This book will teach you a simple method to do just that. Here's how it works:

1. Figure out which way the wind is blowing.
2. Look at the clouds overhead.
3. Match the clouds you see with one of the full-color cloud photographs in "The Weather Wizard's Cloud Book," and the caption beneath the photograph will tell you what kind of weather to expect.

With amazing accuracy, this simple system can account for swiftly changing local weather developments more effectively than weather maps or official area forecasts, which are issued well in advance of weather conditions.

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Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

We remember this book on food weather from our library when we were just a wee weather kid. If you can't enjoy a storm of meatballs - what can you enjoy? Life is delicious in the town of Chewandswallow where it rains soup and juice, snows mashed potatoes, and blows storms of hamburgers--until the weather takes a turn for the worse.

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The Weather Identification Handbook: The Ultimate Guide for Weather Watchers

We always like books that help us identify more types of weather and give us the details on how to tell what's really happening with the weather. This book helps you answer questions like: What does it mean when there is a corona around the moon? How do you tell the difference between stratocumulus and nimbostratus clouds? The Weather Identification Guide is an essential guide to the many different types of weather phenomena that may be observed, and also gives brief details of the weather that may be expected.

You'll learn about:

• Cloud classification
• How to identify different cloud types and how they relate to forthcoming weather
• How clouds are formed
• Optical phenomena
• Precipitation
• Wind
• Severe weather
• Weather systems
• Satellite images and weather maps

It is also perfect for any parent whose child asks the proverbial question, "Why is the sky blue?"

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How to Predict and Prepare for Garden Success in Any Kind of Weather

Gardeners put up with it, complain about it, and even delight in it, but, asks author Sally Roth in The Gardener's Weather Bible, do we truly work with weather to make the most of whatever the day brings? No matter if the skies are glorious or gloomy, Roth educates gardeners to become more attuned to weather's dramatic impact on how our gardens grow. A spiffy distant relative of the Old Farmer's Almanac, The Gardener's Weather Bible is part weather primer, with information on air masses, storm forecasting, as well as the ever-elusive question of why the sky is blue, and part general garden guide.

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The Enigma of Sunspots: A Story of Space Weather

Space weather effects us in all kinds of ways. Sunspots, the strange and elusive dark shapes that periodically sweep across the Sun’s surface, have mystified people for centuries, and also effected our lives in countless ways. Given their elusive cyclical nature and the fact that it is both painful and dangerous to observe the Sun directly, it is little wonder that records of sunspots were almost nonexistent in Europe before the seventeenth century. Today such solar emissions are thought to coincide with major effects in global weather patterns. It may be that this powerful phenomena holds a key to our understanding of the nature of the Sun.

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Cloud Physics: A Popular Introduction to Applied Meteorology

With Spring upon us, perhaps we need to get a book that can provide us with all the insights we need for cloud formation, and the types of precipitation clouds can bring us. We found this well reviewed book - Cloud Physics: A Popular Introduction to Applied Meteorology. An expert and fascinating look at the subject of atmospheric phenomena. Ice crystals and the formation of rain and snow receive a detailed examination, as do the properties of hail. Also includes a review of the techniques for cloud modifications, and a look at the artificial stimulation of rainfall.

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A Gardener's Guide to Frost: Outwit the Weather in the Spring and Fall Seasons

Each year, as you prepare your garden, you know that sooner or later—in the spring or in the fall or in both—Jack Frost will pay you a visit. Knowing that, what can you do at the start of the gardening season to prepare for those frosty nights? In this book, all aspects of frost are explained to help gardeners start their planting earlier in the spring and extend their growing season later in the fall. You’ll learn what weather systems produce frost, how it damages, or enhances, the flavor of your plants, how to read your garden’s microclimate, and how to design your garden so you can work with frost, instead of against it. The informative text is paired with beautiful full-color photos of useful frost protection techniques and wonderful gardens in their full frosty splendor.

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Adventures in Tornado Alley: The Storm Chasers

With the recent events in Atlanta, we've been trying to do some research on tornados and just what they mean for the US moving forward as a whole. The destructive power of the tornado has always been a source of fear and fascination, and never more so than now, when climate change and extreme weather conditions are constantly in the news.

Across the central United States, the infamous storms of Tornado Alley are fueled by the collision of cold fronts from Canada and warm fronts from the Gulf of Mexico. People have been chasing these storms for decades in pursuit of thrilling experiences, but now a new generation of storm chasers is combining scientific knowledge with powerful images. This book follows Mike Hollingshead and Eric Nguyen on seventeen chases through Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, illustrating the unfolding events with sequential shots and a running commentary by the chasers themselves.

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The Cloudspotter's Guide - Know Your Clouds

Want to know what cloud type is what? Why certain clouds look like a dog while others look like the God of Thunder? This book seeks to instruct and entertain about all things cloud or cloudy. We found it a fun read, and have passed it along to several of our weather obsessed friends.

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Windswept: The Story of Wind and Weather

Wind is personal for de Villiers, winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource. A gust from a ferocious gale in South Africa came close to blowing him over a cliff when he was a child, a fearful experience that invests this articulate study of the history and nature of moving air with notable immediacy. Winds figure in the creation myths of almost all cultures, he notes. But it wasn't until the mid-18th century that scientists began to develop a cogent theory about wind and its relation to weather. Two centuries later, during WWII, high-altitude flyers discovered the jet stream and "a real understanding of winds was, finally, in place." De Villiers has marshaled an absorbing if daunting array of historical, cultural, environmental and scientific facts to detail that wind, despite its destructive power, makes life on Earth possible. But the book's grace notes lie in entertaining did-you-know nuggets. Among them: a great storm that lashed London in 1703 caused windmill blades to rotate so fast that friction set them on fire; Cuban meteorologists, more advanced at the turn of the last century than Americans, warned fruitlessly about the path of the hurricane that devastated Galveston.

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Mike Lynch's Minnesota WeatherWatch: A Complete Guide for Weather-Obsessed Minnesotans

From Doppler to dandelions, the WCCO-licensed Mike Lynchs Minnesota WeatherWatch reveals the secrets of weather forecasting in the Land of 10,000 lakes. Veteran broadcast meteorologist Mike Lynch infuses the book with his trademark enthusiasm. He delves into the mechanics and history of the atmosphere and scientific forecasting methods, and then he shows how Mother Nature--in the form of dandelions, sky color, stars, critter activity, lakes, and more--can help us predict the weather. Beautifully illustrated with over 100 color photographs, this book includes a state weather almanac and sidebars on local weather history and lore.

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Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

In Isaac's Storm, Erik Larson blends science and history to tell the story of Galveston, its people, and the hurricane that devastated them. Drawing on hundreds of personal reminiscences of the storm, Larson follows individuals through the fateful day and the storm's aftermath. There's Louisa Rollfing, who begged her husband, August, not to go into town the morning of the storm; the Ursuline Sisters at St. Mary's orphanage who tied their charges to lengths of clothesline to keep them together; Judson Palmer, who huddled in his bathroom with his family and neighbors, hoping to ride out the storm. At the center of it all is Isaac Cline, employee of the nascent Weather Bureau, and his younger brother--and rival weatherman--Joseph. Larson does an excellent job of piecing together Isaac's life and reveals that Isaac was not the quick-thinking hero he claimed to be after the storm ended. The storm itself, however, is the book's true protagonist--and Larson describes its nuances in horrific detail.

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Weather Shamanism: Harmonizing Our Connection with the Elements

With the growing consensus that global warming is a fact comes the realization that the increasingly violent weather we are experiencing is its chief manifestation. Each storm, each flood, each blizzard seems to break 100-year-old records for both intensity and damage. Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases may be too little, too late.

Through a unique blend of anthropological research, shamanic journeys, and personal stories and anecdotes, Moss and Corbin show how humans and weather have always affected each other, and how it is possible to influence the weather. They present teachings directly from the spirits of weather that show how our thoughts and emotions affect weather energetics.

They also reveal the ceremonial and therapeutic aspects of "weather dancing," a practice used to communicate with the weather spirits. Weather Shamanism is about transformation--of ourselves, and thus our world. It is about how we can develop an expanded worldview that honors spiritual realities in order to create a working partnership with the spirits of weather and thereby help to restore well-being and harmony to Earth.

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