The Secret World of Weather

Tristan Gooley

Sceptre

£20

Many readers will already have Tristan Gooley’s The Natural Navigator or How to Read Water. This new title could be glossed as ‘How to read land’. It’s a fascinating insight into microclimates – which species of tree will give you best shelter from the rain (answer: not a broad-leaf), what you can learn from the different textures of sand. Very often Gooley’s skill is to heighten our awareness of phenomena we may have noticed anyway, then help us interpret them as weather signals. Beyond micro-climates Gooley is a memorable cloud-reader and his feeling for wind-eddies and gusts is impressive.  Weather on land is not the same as weather at sea but, as most of us live amphibious lives, I recommend this book.