Product Description

This book provides weather information quickly and surely, because it focusesupon what is going on directly overhead--the actual clouds now on view in thesky, the actual sequences currently developing. 137 color, 19 black-and-whitephotographs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #161685 in Books
• Published on: 1989-01-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 71 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780912697109
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"You don't want to start the new year without [it]." -- San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author
Jim Duncan is a graduate meteorologist and weather anchorman for WWBT - Channel 12 in Richmond, Virginia.

Hiram J. Herbert is a contributor for the following Algonquin Books Title: The Weather Wizard's Cloud Book.

The late Louis D. Rubin, Sr.,was a self-taught weather forecaster whose long-range predictions earned him the title of "The Weather Wizard."

Customer Reviews

On-the-Spot Forecasting
I first read this book when my math teacher lent it to me. Since then, I have gotten my own copy of this book and use it quite often. To get an idea of what the weather will be like within the next 24 hours, all you need to know is the wind direction and the cloud type. A quick glance through the book will do the rest. My only complaint is that it is sometimes hard to find the correct type of cloud in the book, as clouds do not always conform to the general pictures in the book. For help in identifying the cloud type, I would recommend the NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY FIELD GUIDE TO NORTH AMERICAN WEATHER. The pictures in there are wonderful, clear and really help a lot. Otherwise, THE WEATHER WIZARD'S CLOUD BOOK has proved very useful while away from a weather broadcast. If you're outdoors and away from a T.V. or radio station often, this book is a must.

Small Gem of a Book...
This small hard to find book (unless you order it online) starts with a basic premise: to predict the weather you need to do 2 things-determine the direction of the wind and identify the clouds currently in the sky. That being said, I would consider this book a great primer for anyone interested in naked eye weather forecasting.

The book includes color cloud charts, discusses weather folklore, precipitation, warm and cold fronts, and volcanic eruptions.

This a general primer. The information is not spoon fed to the reader.

The strength of this approach is Rubin's writing is entertaining and lively, and will enourage you to not only make your own weather predictions, but to also seek more information outside the scope of the book.

The weakness is that some of the material is incomplete. The book was completed by Louis Rubin's children with the help of a meteorologist after Rubin passed away (based on the Introduction), using Rubin's cloud photo collections and his collected writings.

As a result, some of the material is incomplete. For example, Rubin describes the 4 types of clouds and the 10 specific clouds most associated with weather changes. You then have to search all over the book to find those 10 clouds, and even then, you're not sure (based on the prefixed names) if you're looking at the right photographs. I suspect at the time of his passing, Rubin's cloud photo collection was far from complete.

That being said, I still liked the book, consider it a keeper, and respect Rubin's work in this area as an amateur meteorologist.

Superb, portable, and incomplete
I bought this book in preparation for an advanced mariner's meteorology course, and could not have made this comment without having first gained that higher level of knowledge.

This is a suberb book with two major flaws:

1) It sticks to the two-dimensional depiction of weather that is common to the average person. Although there are a couple of illustrations showing altitude, the author could easily have put in a few pages on the rotation of the earth, the 500 mb level, and how weather on the surface cannot be understood without underestanding what is happening at the 18,000 level. As my instructor put it, the high-level troughs are the chicken that hatches the surface level (scrambled) egg.

2) It provides the pictures of the clouds, but missed the key chance to break down the names into the original latin meanings, to create a matrix of high (Cirro), medium (alto), and low (strato), with substantive meaning including layer (stratus), curly (cirrus), stacked in a vertical heap (cumulo-cumulus), and delivering rain (nimbus).

Add this little matrix above, and read "Mariner's Guide to the 500-Millibar Chart" by Joe Stenkiewicz and Lee Chesneau, and Google for to find his web site, and you'll have all you need to move to the better three-dimensional interactive viewing of weather and weather charts.

I also recommend Understanding Weatherfax