The Art of Manliness - How to Predict the Weather (No Apps Required)

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:10.960 When you're deciding what to wear in the morning or on the viability of some activity for the

00:00:14.400 weekend, you'll likely turn to a weather app to see what the forecast holds. My guest today

00:00:18.620 would suggest supplementing that habit with another, actually going outside, looking at

00:00:22.400 the sky and feeling the air in order to engage in an ancient and satisfying practice and

00:00:26.540 build a more intimate relationship with the weather and the world around you. His name

00:00:30.080 is Tristan Gooley, and he's a master outdoorsman, expert natural navigator in global adventure,

00:00:34.560 as well as the author of the book, The Secret World of Weather, How to Read Signs in Every

00:00:38.420 Cloud, Breeze, Hill, Street, Plant, Animal, and Dewdrop. Tristan and I begin our conversation

00:00:43.320 with how modern meteorological science is incredibly useful, but has also disconnected us from the

00:00:47.860 weather signs right in front of our faces. We also discuss some of the different microclimates

00:00:51.720 that can exist even on two different sides of a single tree. We then do a quick review

00:00:55.660 of some of the basic scientific principles that underlie understanding the weather before

00:00:59.120 turning to the concrete, research-backed, field-tested signs you can observe in your

00:01:02.960 environment to predict the weather, like the shape and height of clouds, and why you should

00:01:06.520 check those clouds from lunchtime onward. We then discuss whether there's truth to the

00:01:10.100 old saying, red sky at night, sailor's delight, red sky in morning, sailors take warning, and

00:01:14.860 what changes in plants and the behavior of animals can tell us about the coming forecast. We

00:01:19.100 end our conversation with how to get started today with predicting the weather using

00:01:22.060 natural signs. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash weather.

00:01:37.520 All right, Tristan Gooley, welcome back to the show.

00:01:40.160 Thanks for having me on.

00:01:41.260 So we've had you on last time to talk about how to navigate in nature, using nature to make

00:01:47.240 our way in the world. You got a new book out called The Secret World of Weather, How to

00:01:51.300 Read Signs in Every Cloud, Breeze, Hill, Street, Plant, Animal, and Dewdrop. And I really love

00:01:57.160 this book. Like all your books, it's like, it's like a, I feel like whenever I read your

00:02:01.240 book, I'm under, like, it's like uncovering the secret code that's been in front of my face

00:02:06.420 this entire time on how to understand the world around me. This one's all about weather.

00:02:10.800 And you start off the books making the claim that modern weather forecasting has really

00:02:16.980 changed the way we view weather and disconnected it from us, even though we're checking it all

00:02:21.260 the time. What do you mean by that?

00:02:23.940 Well, the scientists have done an amazing job of understanding weather. And it was such a tough

00:02:30.520 challenge. I mean, there are a whole load of things that we solved before we got any handle

00:02:34.340 on what the weather was doing. You know, in the past hundred years, there were still people

00:02:37.880 saying, we're never going to understand it. It's beyond science. But, you know, we'll never

00:02:42.560 achieve perfection. And that's not really the goal. But they have got to the point, the

00:02:46.280 meteorologists, of being able to say, this is what the big stuff is doing. And, you know,

00:02:51.500 we're now at the stage. If you look at any forecast you rely on, whether it's internet,

00:02:56.280 TV, it can be in a paper, it doesn't matter. You'll notice that there are some pretty big

00:03:01.220 patterns there. We're talking about hundreds, if not thousands of miles. And that's what the

00:03:05.580 scientists have had to do to get any handle on the weather. They've had to treat it as a big

00:03:09.900 atmospheric phenomenon. But actually what we experience is what's going on in our neck of

00:03:15.000 the woods, sometimes literally. So there's become this disconnect where the meteorologists are doing

00:03:20.020 an amazing job and they are saving lives every day because they can keep an eye on the really big

00:03:26.140 weather systems. And those are the, you know, for the most part, the things that cause serious

00:03:29.820 and dangerous situations. Not always, and we'll probably come on to that. But our personal

00:03:34.780 experience is far more intimate. It's what's going on, you know, within a few hundred feet of us.

00:03:40.980 And culturally, something quite, there's become this huge disconnect where the scientists have

00:03:47.100 given us this amazing stuff, but it's slightly taken our eye off our personal experience of the

00:03:52.420 weather and all the wonderful signs that are all around us.

00:03:56.320 And meteorologists, they call this weather, it's like within a hundred feet of us.

00:03:59.660 They call them microclimates. And they can be like, again, they can be really small.

00:04:04.200 So to give us an idea of how small a microclimate can be, and yet you can see,

00:04:09.720 you know, really big divergences in climates in a small space. Any examples from that that you

00:04:15.180 experienced or seen?

00:04:16.780 Yes, there are examples, you know, within touching distance for all of us, but there aren't that many

00:04:20.880 examples where there's data. And for me to really make the point early on in the case I'm making in

00:04:26.880 the book, I used one of the few examples where scientists have actually measured. And it's a

00:04:31.740 place in Europe in the Swiss Jura mountains. And there's a mountain ridge there. And the ridge

00:04:37.700 itself is like all ridges by definition. It's, you know, it's a skinny thing. It's only two feet from

00:04:42.400 one side to the other. And yet the weather, the microclimate on each side of this ridge

00:04:48.400 is so dramatically different that it is, it's, it's comparable to traveling 600 miles north or

00:04:55.680 south. So we can literally experience on average, the same change in weather by taking two steps over

00:05:02.540 a ridge as we can by traveling 600 miles north or south. And of course, that's why we travel 600

00:05:08.580 miles south on holiday sometimes, but that's, we don't have to go to these extraordinary places.

00:05:13.700 That's just, you know, that's just me using some science and there isn't a lot of it, but some

00:05:17.980 science to prove the point. But the exciting thing is that this stuff, this, this, this incredible

00:05:22.880 change over small distances is happening all around us every day. Well, you say there's even like a

00:05:28.180 single tree can have a microclimate. Yeah, absolutely. And this is exactly what, uh, you know, I felt

00:05:33.880 really passionate about what drove the research is that if I, in the course of my work, I, you know,

00:05:39.840 some of my best friends are meteorologists doesn't sound quite right, but it's true. And I have

00:05:43.680 conversations with them and I say, you know, the weather on two sides of a tree is different and

00:05:47.340 they will say, oh, you're not talking about weather, you're talking about microclimate. And, and I'm

00:05:51.120 saying, well, well, let's just, let's just pause here. What I'm saying is that the wind, the sun, the

00:05:56.180 rain, the temperature, and quite a lot of other things change when we walk around a tree. And I think

00:06:01.500 those are what we mean by weather. And they go, okay, fair cop. We, you know, you do your thing,

00:06:07.000 we'll carry on doing our thing. And that, and that's really what the book is about is this, this

00:06:10.940 world. They, it's not that they, you know, don't find it interesting. It's just, there is no job

00:06:15.840 there because you can't have one person talking to another person about their experiences. They

00:06:20.020 walk around a tree, but we can, as individuals take a real interest in that. And that's where

00:06:24.780 the fun starts. Well, I mean, give us an example, like how, how does a climate change around a single

00:06:28.820 tree? Okay. So when, uh, when the wind hits a tree, if you, if you imagine a textbook sort of

00:06:35.360 bulbous tree, you know, whatever, whatever species pops into your mind and the species isn't

00:06:39.620 important. I'm not thinking of a conifer here. I'm thinking of sort of rounded an oak or whatever,

00:06:42.920 whatever comes into your mind. What, what you'll have is a, uh, the ground, a trunk. And then,

00:06:48.180 as I say, this kind of rounded bulbous canopy of the tree, when the wind hits that tree,

00:06:53.420 it's an obstacle. So there are sudden air pressure changes. You know, the, the wind basically piles

00:06:58.680 into the canopy. It can't go anywhere. So the pressure increases. And then whenever that happens,

00:07:03.500 we've got a place downwind of the tree where the pressure, the air pressure drops. We've got high

00:07:08.440 pressure on one side, low pressure on the other, that leads to the wind accelerating around the

00:07:12.900 tree. And what that means in, in terms of our personal experience is that there is a, an

00:07:17.540 acceleration of the breeze underneath the tree. So next time you see an isolated tree, like an oak

00:07:23.340 or something like that on a hot day, where you can feel a gentle breeze, you, you will gravitate

00:07:28.500 towards the tree anyway. You know, it's a great place to, to, to get some shade and cool down for a

00:07:32.800 second. But whilst you're there, just notice how the breeze accelerates. As you move under the tree,

00:07:37.680 you are experiencing a different wind to somebody who's only 30 feet away from you.

00:07:42.140 And that, and that's, that's, that's what it's all about.

00:07:45.800 All right. So you start off by making the case that in order to see the weather, like just by

00:07:50.720 looking at your environment, you can start seeing like what weather is going to be like,

00:07:54.520 or could be like, you have to understand some basic meteorological principles. And the first one

00:07:59.960 is how heat moves. And there are three ways heat moves in our environment. So what are those ways

00:08:04.820 and how do we see those different heat movement patterns in nature?

00:08:08.280 Yeah. I'll, I'll just sort of preface it by saying all of my work is based in science and

00:08:13.200 that is very important. I find things like folklore inspirational and, and they do sometimes shine a

00:08:18.540 light into areas that are worth me rummaging around in and trying to find some good truths. But

00:08:23.560 in this book and every, every, everything I've done, I need to understand the scientific principles.

00:08:28.080 I need to know it's not just an old wives tale. You know, the old wives tale might point to good

00:08:32.300 science, but I need the good science. And so that's what I'm doing here is just explaining,

00:08:37.260 you know, I've, I take it as a compliment, compliment when sometimes people say to me,

00:08:40.820 I'm getting flashbacks to kind of like being in school. It's kind of like, well, we have to do a

00:08:43.920 little bit of school to then do the fun stuff outdoors, because if you don't have solid building

00:08:48.040 blocks, then the, the fun stuff you don't have confidence in. So heat moves from one, one place

00:08:53.040 to another in, in three, three main ways. We've got, um, radiation. So have you, you know,

00:08:59.080 that, that experience where you you're in a cold place, it might be snowy. If you've ever been

00:09:03.540 skiing and you're sitting outside having lunch and actually you feel really quite warm, the heat

00:09:08.020 energy is traveling directly all the way across space and hitting us as radiation. The, the black

00:09:13.400 part of your jacket feels warmer than the white part. That is, that is radiation. Then we've got

00:09:19.480 conduction, which is heat is, is molecules vibrating. And if you've had that experience where you open the

00:09:25.320 kitchen drawer, there's a wooden spoon in it and a metal knife, the metal knife feels colder than the

00:09:29.900 wooden spoon, even though we know they must both be the same temperature because they're in the same

00:09:33.300 drawer. All that's happening there is the warmth is flowing faster out of our hand into the metal

00:09:38.480 because metal conducts heat well and slowly into the wood because wood doesn't. And this is, this is

00:09:43.860 relevant to weather because a lot of the patterns we see on the ground, and I'm thinking of things like

00:09:48.800 dew and snow and things like, and frost and things like that have a, have a relationship with

00:09:53.820 conduction. So once we understand it, we can go like, ah, I understand why there's a frost there

00:09:57.700 and there isn't there. And then the third way is convection. So if a parcel of air warms up and

00:10:03.680 expands, it becomes less dense than the air around it. It starts to rise up and that is transferring

00:10:09.580 heat vertically upwards. And that underpins a lot of what we see in terms of cloud patterns and signs

00:10:15.360 there. Gotcha. And then another component of weather, I think weather's, you kind of described it as a

00:10:21.240 soup. There's heat and then there's liquid as another part of it. And you have to understand

00:10:25.420 how the sort of the phases of water, what happens with water as it passes through different states

00:10:29.480 of matter. So like solid, liquid, and gas. So how do we see that happen in nature?

00:10:35.160 Well, again, I think lots of listeners will get, get sort of flashbacks, hopefully sort of happy

00:10:39.200 ones. But yeah, this, this is a, this is quite sort of fundamental stuff. Water, we know as a liquid,

00:10:45.680 we see it every day. It's a big part of our lives. We know what it looks like when it's a solid,

00:10:49.980 it's, it's, it's ice. Gas is, it's, it's less well known. People get a little bit, not confused,

00:10:56.080 but if, if you think of, of water as a gas, sometimes people think of steam, but actually

00:11:01.160 the steam there, it's in liquid form. That's why we can see it. So water can exist as water vapor as

00:11:05.760 a gas, but it's invisible. So just understanding that it's, it's moving between those forms and,

00:11:10.540 and temperature is absolutely critical. We know that, you know, the, you know, on a sunny day,

00:11:15.520 the, the, the puddle on the tarmac disappears much more quickly than it does on a, on a cold

00:11:20.160 overcast day. So temperature is so vital to these changes of state and understanding the changes of

00:11:25.540 state helps us understand what clouds are going to do and whether certain things are going to happen.

00:11:30.120 It's, it's all part of the kind of prediction toolkit.

00:11:33.520 Well, so like something you hear a lot in your weather forecast, you're like, what does that even

00:11:37.280 mean? You hear, you hear a meteorologist say, well, the dew point is whatever. What do they mean by

00:11:42.300 dew point? Okay. So if we think of a parcel of air, any air anywhere in the world will have some

00:11:49.100 water vapor, some water in invisible gas form in it. Even if you're over the hottest desert on the

00:11:54.820 hottest day, you know, if it's a world record, you know, world record hot time, there will still be

00:12:00.760 some water vapor in the air, but temperature is critical. So what happens is take your parcel of air

00:12:06.760 and in a kind of thought experiment, you've got a, you've got a dial and you just start turning the

00:12:11.240 temperature down, you know, a few degrees, your parcel of air, nothing happens. It'll reach a

00:12:15.940 point where the air cannot hold the water vapor in it in gaseous form anymore. And it condenses down

00:12:23.520 into liquid form at which point we see it. We might see it in the same way you see steam coming out of

00:12:28.940 a kettle, but another way we see it almost daily is, is as a cloud. So that's, you know, that's a really

00:12:36.460 sort of a really sort of key thing is the relationship between invisible water in the

00:12:41.140 air, which is all around us all the time for our whole lives. If the temperature drops to a certain

00:12:46.580 point that is going to turn to liquid in suspension in the air. And the point it does that is known as

00:12:52.480 the dew point. And what does that tell us about the weather? Well, the, the more humid the air is,

00:12:59.720 the closer to the dew point we are likely to be. I mean, so basically you can keep putting more and

00:13:06.280 more water in gas form into the same parcel of air, but there will come a point where the air,

00:13:11.640 you know, I personify everything. It sometimes sounds a bit ridiculous, but there'll come a

00:13:14.680 point where the air sort of goes, no, I'm not having it as gas anymore. It's going to condense down

00:13:19.040 into liquid form. So different days, I take a lot of inspiration from indigenous communities as well

00:13:26.420 for the simple reason that this isn't, this isn't just good sport to them. This is life or death to

00:13:31.060 a lot of them. So they don't, you know, there's, there's a lot of interesting myths and stories and

00:13:35.040 legends in indigenous communities, but when it comes to nature's signs, they mean business. It's got to

00:13:39.800 work. So a good example of, of this, this concept in a, in, in an indigenous community is the community

00:13:46.660 called the Wola and they, they use this expression chain at, which means rain sun. And that starts to,

00:13:53.420 you know, an issue that doesn't mean anything, but, but the science behind it is what they're

00:13:56.600 saying is the day starts sunny, but we know it's going to rain by the afternoon because we can feel

00:14:01.980 that it is a humid day. And it is the sort of day where the amount of water vapor in the air

00:14:07.160 cannot stay as gas all day. You know, then they wouldn't use this terms. They don't see it that way,

00:14:12.060 but we can all have that experience. And we've all had it. You know, August is a classic time for it,

00:14:16.700 but you walk outside and it, sometimes it just feels like a dry heat and you sort of go,

00:14:21.180 you just get a gut feel. This is this, this weather is going to last.

00:14:25.460 Sometimes you walk out there and it's that muggy close, you know, you, you, you're sweating before

00:14:30.380 you're running, you know, brisk war, you know, there's sweat on your forehead. That's, you know,

00:14:34.640 what indigenous people might call a rain sun. That means it's not going to take very much

00:14:38.240 for the gas in the water gas to turn to liquid. And that's the start of very serious sort of weather

00:14:45.620 changes. Right. So I think you make the point in the book that whenever there's a lot of

00:14:49.360 community in the air and it's warm, that typically creates an unstable environment. And that's when

00:14:54.440 you get, you can get rain or thunderstorms. Yeah. So another of the, for me, one of the most

00:14:59.900 fundamental and exciting and little known concepts is about stability. So I talk about stable and

00:15:06.000 unstable systems. So if you take a bowl in the kitchen and you put an apple in the bottom of the

00:15:10.220 bowl and you push it up the side and let go, the apple goes back to the middle of the bowl.

00:15:13.740 And you can do that 1000 times in a row. And the same thing's going to happen. It's a stable system.

00:15:18.020 If something changes, it goes back to the start. It's auto-correcting. If you turn the bowl upside

00:15:23.220 down and put the apple on the top and give it a nudge, it rolls off the bowl, off the table,

00:15:26.640 on the floor. It doesn't go back to its start point. You know, it's, it's the sort of a small

00:15:30.820 amount of mayhem. Now our weather is either stable. I, if something changes, whether it's heat,

00:15:37.160 you know, water levels, whatever, it'll just settle back to what it was. And that is literally

00:15:42.040 settled, stable weather. But sometimes there's a small change. And the next thing, the sky is,

00:15:49.240 is full of ominous clouds. And a half an hour later, there's a thunderstorm and that's an

00:15:53.680 unstable system. And the air has, it's a characteristic of the air. It's, it's the

00:15:58.840 gradient of temperature change with altitude. Now, you know, we're getting into the science,

00:16:04.380 you know, but the truth is once you understand the concepts, it's not like every time you look at a

00:16:08.480 sign, you have to go like, Oh, right. I've got to start thinking about stability and all that sort

00:16:11.580 of stuff. It's just to make you confident in knowing that, okay, this is an unstable atmosphere.

00:16:16.300 So if I start to see clouds rising, they're not going to stop. It's all going to kick off and there

00:16:20.960 is going to be a thunderstorm. So it's, it's a case to sort of being really confident, understanding

00:16:24.940 the science. But then once you've got that in the locker, every time you see the signs, you're not

00:16:30.980 sort of thinking this is mysterious. You're like, I know what's going to happen next. And I know why it's

00:16:35.540 going to happen next. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:16:40.960 And now back to the show. So what's the sign for like an unstable environment? So you mean,

00:16:45.140 I guess that heat, like you walk out and it's kind of muggy and you think, Oh, this, this isn't

00:16:49.300 going to lie. It's going to get stormy. Is that one of them or what's some other ones too?

00:16:53.060 Yeah. So the, the mugginess is, is, is a sort of slightly fuzzy sign and isn't, it's quite hard to,

00:16:57.740 to, to sort of get a real measure on, but there is a, there is a really, you know, concrete solid one,

00:17:03.440 which is the shape of clouds. So if you look out any day, and it's one of the first things I do

00:17:08.560 every single day is you have a lookout where I live. There will be clouds, you know, in the UK,

00:17:14.400 one or two days a year there aren't, but, but most places in the world, you're going to see some

00:17:18.040 clouds at some point during the day, just have a look at their shape. If they are, if they are more

00:17:21.760 broad, if they're broader than they are at all, that's an indication of a stable atmosphere. So

00:17:27.380 there may be change, but it's very unlikely in the next few hours that all hell is going to break

00:17:32.420 loose. If you see clouds that are much taller than they are wide, that's the sign of an unstable

00:17:37.880 atmosphere. And all it will take is, is one, one small change in your local environment. And you

00:17:42.460 can have a heavy rain showers or storms. And the clouds that you're looking at,

00:17:46.240 there's a certain type of cloud. It's a, what is it? Cumulus? Which one is it that?

00:17:50.440 Yeah. Yeah. So I, I try and keep the Latin to, to a minimum because I don't think it brings people

00:17:56.600 into the fun side of the subject, but I do break the clouds we need to understand into three

00:18:01.700 broad families. There's, there's cumulus, which is the, the fluffy sheep ones, start of the Simpsons.

00:18:07.440 You know, I think everybody knows them. They're kind of, they are cartoon clouds. Then we've got

00:18:11.980 stratus, which are the blankets, which can, you know, cover a thousand miles. They're pretty dull

00:18:16.600 to look at. They're just these long flat blankets and cirrus are the wispy ones. You know, in the

00:18:22.760 modern lifestyle, people can go a month and not see cirrus. It's, it's out there most days, but it,

00:18:27.560 it, it doesn't, it doesn't grab our attention, but there are lots of wonderful signs in it.

00:18:30.740 So the one we're talking about here is cumulus and cumulus tells us lots of things instantly.

00:18:36.660 It is basically a marker and it is saying that there is a thermal directly underneath me. There

00:18:42.180 is a column of air rising underneath that cloud. That is the only reason that a cumulus is there

00:18:48.800 because what's happened is there's been some local heating. So the sun's radiation hits a darker patch.

00:18:55.940 I talked about the black part of our jackets, you know, might be warmer than the white part on a,

00:19:01.580 on a hot day. It's exactly the same in the landscape. The sun's radiation hits a dark

00:19:05.560 coniferous forest or perhaps the dark tarmac of a city. And that heats up much more than the paler

00:19:12.000 colours all around it. That leads to a column of air rising through convection. It reaches a point

00:19:17.140 where the temperature has dropped to the point where the water vapour can't stay as gas,

00:19:20.380 turns to liquid. Voila, we have a cloud and we have a cumulus cloud. Now the shape of that cloud,

00:19:27.460 so the cloud itself is telling us that's where the thermal is and we understand why it's there.

00:19:31.780 So it's making a map of the ground. You can, you can spot islands, woodlands, cities, cliffs. There

00:19:37.520 are lots of things you can do with those clouds. You can, you know, there's a good tradition of,

00:19:40.900 of using them to make a map, but they are also mapping what's going on in the atmosphere. So the

00:19:47.180 shape of them, how tall they are relative to how wide they are, is, is mapping the stability. So we've

00:19:52.840 got two maps there, a map of what's going on on the ground and a map of what's going on in the air,

00:19:57.680 just in one cloud. And not only do you, if you look at the, the height, so if it's, if it's taller than

00:20:03.060 it is wider, good chance you're going to see some, some rain or thunderstorm. But another sign you can

00:20:08.400 look at a cumulus cloud as if it's lower, that's another sign that that weather's likely.

00:20:13.740 Yeah. I talk about the seven golden patterns, which is just my shorthand for after many,

00:20:19.000 many years, decades of me weighing what does and doesn't work, what is practical out there.

00:20:24.440 There are, there are the small collection of things and the, the shape we've, we've talked

00:20:28.960 about in terms of tall or wide, the height is, is actually the one before that in terms of,

00:20:34.580 of length of forecast. So everybody kind of notices the difference between a sunny day and a day where

00:20:41.300 the clouds feel like they're almost touching the rooftops and it's, it's, it's, you know,

00:20:45.660 it's dull or it's rainy all day and stuff like that. Everybody notices that scale of difference,

00:20:49.520 but what very few people spot, and it's very easy to spot is how for, you know, two days,

00:20:55.320 perhaps the clouds have been almost coming down steps. They've been getting steadily lower.

00:20:59.140 So if we just get into the habit of, you know, you don't have to spend, you don't even have to

00:21:03.920 spend 10 minutes each day. You can do this in a few seconds. You just look out in the morning and

00:21:08.200 you go, okay, I'm seeing these sorts of clouds. Are they cumulus? Are they stratus? Are they serious?

00:21:13.520 What height are they? And then you look back, you know, maybe your lunch break, you just look again,

00:21:17.660 it's only 20 seconds. And one thing I actually encourage, it seems, it seems sort of counterintuitive

00:21:23.420 or going against the grain of what I do is I act, I actually encourage people to cheat by which I

00:21:28.240 mean, when you're new to this stuff, you want the confidence that, that you're going to learn

00:21:33.220 something that works. So what I say to people is cheat, look at the forecast. And when you see a

00:21:38.360 spell, let's say you've had five days of fair weather and, and the forecasters are telling you,

00:21:42.800 the meteorologists are telling you, you're, you're, you're in for a couple of days of bad weather and

00:21:46.780 rain. That's a really good time to cheat because you, they're basically saying to you,

00:21:51.040 the signs are coming, have a look for them. And then what we do is we notice the clouds getting

00:21:54.780 steadily lower over those, you know, five days, it's blue skies. Then we see cirrus,

00:21:59.280 then we see, you know, a blanket of cirrus, and then we see some stratus. And what we notice is

00:22:03.380 it's getting steadily lower. And then, and then, you know, we just start adding these patterns and

00:22:07.980 the cheating is good at this stage, because what it means is if you do it a few times, you get to the

00:22:12.960 point where you have confidence in the signs. And that's the moment where it gets exciting because you

00:22:17.640 then see the sign and your brain will say to you, bad weather's coming.

00:22:22.060 Another sign that I thought was interesting was you can start using immediately. If you just look

00:22:25.580 at the clouds, like this cumulus clouds, usually they're, they look like the Super Mario Brothers

00:22:29.740 world clouds. They're all kind of fluffy, even on the bottom. But if at the bottom, the clouds are

00:22:34.320 looking kind of jagged and not, not as fluffy and clean, that's a sign that you could probably,

00:22:39.920 good chance you might have rain.

00:22:41.080 Yeah, absolutely. The, the flat bottom, you know, neat cartoon style cloud is, is, is a typical sort

00:22:50.340 of settled sign, because what it's basically saying is at this, at this altitude, the temperature is at

00:22:57.960 the dew point and the, the, the gaseous water vapor is turning to visible liquid, i.e. a cloud at this

00:23:04.580 line. And it is logical. It's not, we shouldn't expect the atmosphere to have totally different

00:23:09.480 temperatures as you, as you move along the same altitude. So if we see a cloud that's got a flat

00:23:14.920 bottom, we can say, okay, things are steady. Things are stable. Things are, you know, things

00:23:19.720 are not, not kicking off in any way. If we start to see it's ruffled, it's jagged, it's got bits

00:23:25.780 look, looking like they're almost breaking off underneath. We say to ourselves, okay, why is that

00:23:29.780 happening? Okay. Well, one thing we can be pretty confident of is this, there's some unusual

00:23:34.160 temperature changes going on at the bottom of the cloud. And the most common reason is that rain is

00:23:39.140 falling out of the cloud, cooling the air beneath it. And that's leading to the dew point being

00:23:44.340 reached beneath the cloud, which is why it looks so uneven. So you can actually, again, a really

00:23:49.780 good kind of hack on this is if you see a cloud in the distance and you're pretty sure, you know,

00:23:55.440 you can sometimes actually see the rain falling out of it. Just notice the bottom of that cloud is

00:23:59.340 not flat. And then, you know, another time you see one that's perfectly flat and you can be

00:24:04.540 absolutely certain that it's not raining underneath. All right. So a few signs to look for, again,

00:24:08.180 just to recap, look at if it's, if the cloud is taller than it is wider, good chance it could

00:24:12.840 be some rain. Another one, if you notice the clouds getting lower throughout the, you know,

00:24:17.260 through progression of days, sign bad weather could be coming. Then also that, that jagged bottom.

00:24:22.820 And you also make this point that you recommend checking clouds after lunch as opposed to the

00:24:28.100 morning. Why is that? Yeah, that's particularly true on a, on what appears to be a fair weather day.

00:24:34.020 You know, if, if we, if we take that sort of slightly, um, that situation we've all been in

00:24:39.720 where you, you look out of the window in the morning and it's blue skies and you, you maybe

00:24:43.720 kind of message, you know, friends or whatever, and you say, let's meet in the afternoon or the

00:24:49.180 early evening. What it's quite important to do is, is by lunchtime, you want to be having a really

00:24:55.040 good look at how the clouds are behaving because the sun rises in the morning. And at the moment,

00:25:00.180 the sun rises, the ground is, is cold. It's had a whole nighttime of releasing its, its energy out

00:25:05.640 to space. And it's, it's cold, you know, cold for the season, certainly. But by, by the middle of

00:25:12.180 the morning, the sun has started to heat the landscape. And certainly by lunchtime, there

00:25:16.580 will be these thermals. So there will be these pockets of air rising. Now, if the, if the atmosphere

00:25:22.120 is stable, not much happens. They try and go up a bit, but they can't because there's a,

00:25:26.980 there's a layer of warm air on top of the warm air that's trying to rise. And that stops them.

00:25:31.020 But if this kind of, this, this daytime warming meets an unstable atmosphere, then it sets off

00:25:38.640 a slight chain reaction. And that's when we start to get the taller clouds. So you shouldn't

00:25:42.840 expect to see massively tall clouds at the very, very start of the day when you're, when

00:25:47.860 you're practiced. And this is what I'm looking for. You're looking for, you know, really quite

00:25:50.840 subtle things then. But when you're starting out, look from lunchtime onwards, because the

00:25:55.820 land has had time to heat up. The thermals have been, have been created. And that's when

00:26:00.940 you can start to see whether, whether these, these towering clouds are, are building up.

00:26:05.160 So speaking like looking at the clouds or the sky for some signs about what the weather

00:26:10.620 might do in the next day or so, I'm sure everyone's heard that saying, I mean, I think

00:26:14.620 even Jesus said this in the Bible, like red skies in morning, sailors take warning, red

00:26:19.860 skies at night, sailors delight. Is there anything to that saying?

00:26:22.780 Yes. And, and I've over the years had a fun wrestle with lots of weather law and that

00:26:29.080 is one of the, one of the best. It's brilliant on lots of levels. The most important is that

00:26:33.720 it works in a, in a weather forecasting sense. And the reason it works is there's one half

00:26:38.720 of it that's more dependable. And that is the red sky at night, sailors delight, or over

00:26:42.940 here, we sometimes hear shepherds delight, same deal. What we're seeing there is, and so

00:26:47.180 many of nature signs that are, are strong and interesting and, and popular are the ones that

00:26:53.880 put two very simple things together to give you, you know, a lot more than you, you thought

00:26:57.900 you might get. And that's what we've, we've got going on here. What we've got going on here is

00:27:02.260 red sky at night. Okay. Why is it red? Okay. If it's red sky at night, that's telling us that we

00:27:08.860 can see a long way to the West. If, if the weather's terrible, you never see a red sky. There

00:27:13.460 are too many clouds in the way it turns red because the, the other, the other colors are

00:27:17.800 filtered out by the atmosphere when the, when the sun is having to pass through so much air.

00:27:21.180 But the only thing we need to know now is if it's a red sky, you know, at sunset, we can

00:27:26.380 see all the way to the sunset. There is, there is not enough clouds or even water vapor or

00:27:30.820 anything to filter out that light. The other very simple bit is because of the way the earth

00:27:35.320 rotates, most of our weather in the Northern temperate zones, which is, you know, most of North

00:27:40.920 America and most of Europe and lots of other places that, you know, use this sort of weather

00:27:44.640 law. Most of our weather comes from the West. So two simple things. Visibility is great in the

00:27:50.900 direction the weather is coming from. That is a very positive sign. A red sky in the morning,

00:27:55.720 Shepard's warning, we're just flipping that on its head. But what we're saying is we can see a long

00:28:00.680 way to the East, but typically that weather has gone through. So it's not a guarantee that bad weather

00:28:06.520 is coming. But quite often we notice a red sky in the morning when the sun is bouncing off clouds

00:28:11.900 and those clouds can't be to the East of us. Otherwise we wouldn't be seeing the sun.

00:28:16.120 So again, we put the two pieces together and it's basically saying the good weather's in the past,

00:28:21.480 the bad weather's probably in the future.

00:28:23.960 And this is giving, so this saying is giving you some insights about cold and warm fronts,

00:28:28.400 basically like on a, this is like bigger scale weather. You're not, it's not going to tell you

00:28:32.220 like what weather's going to be like in the next, you know, couple of hours, but you can get an idea

00:28:37.460 of like, well, there's a good chance we're gonna have some unstable weather coming in soon.

00:28:40.940 Yeah, absolutely. And all of these things grow in strength and their ability to predict powerfully

00:28:47.600 is, is about building a jigsaw. So that's red sky at night. Uh, sailors delight is a nice big piece,

00:28:53.380 but it'll never give you the whole picture. You start tuning into some of the other things we've

00:28:57.080 been talking about. And, and to be honest, you know, there are several hundred, you know,

00:29:01.700 in the book and that's what it's all about is I don't expect somebody to go out there and look

00:29:04.740 for several hundred, but I would expect someone to go, ah, I've seen that sign. I'm going to look

00:29:09.900 for two or three others. And by the time you've got three, you're going, okay, you know, I'm building

00:29:14.420 a picture here and your, your probability of success goes from 60% to 90% quite quickly.

00:29:20.100 Another component of weather that we experience, you know, very viscerally, we, we feel it

00:29:24.920 is wind, uh, anything that, that the wind can tell us about the weather, what it might

00:29:29.380 be like in the next couple of hours or days. Yeah. I like to think of it. And the way I

00:29:33.860 describe it in the book is as a needle and gauge. So we, we are all used to the idea that any gauge

00:29:39.880 that we're monitoring, if it goes from, from one side to the other, something, something

00:29:44.140 big has changed. And it's, it's exactly the same is true of the main wind patterns. So if you

00:29:51.140 just get into the habit of just taking a rough interest of where the wind is coming

00:29:54.720 from. So if you're in a city, you know, you just, just take an interest, which direction

00:29:59.240 the clouds are moving over the tops of the buildings, or even, you know, if, if it's a

00:30:02.960 bit more open, you can look at things like flags or feel it and things like that. It doesn't

00:30:06.260 matter how you, you're just getting some loose idea what the weather is. You, you know, to

00:30:10.440 start with bring in forecasts if you want to, if it says, okay, you know, we've got a wind

00:30:14.480 from the West. Great. And if, if you, if you then notice that change significantly, and by

00:30:20.060 that, I mean, not sort of 10 or 20 degrees, I'm talking about 90 degrees here. If suddenly

00:30:23.320 the wind is coming from the South, then that is a very, very strong sign that there is going

00:30:29.280 to be a major weather change. And the reason is that this is at the large scale. This is

00:30:33.980 overlapping with the traditional, you know, meteorology where we're stepping into what

00:30:37.800 I call the known world here, as in this is, this is what forecasts are touching on as well.

00:30:42.180 But there's no reason why we can't bring that into our toolkit. If you get those major weather,

00:30:46.560 major wind direction changes, the it's shorthand really for the air mass you are in is about to

00:30:53.680 be kicked out of the way by another air mass. So you might be in a, in a cold, dry bit of air,

00:30:59.220 there might be a warm, wet bit of air, just trying to, trying to barge in. And the wind direction

00:31:03.260 changes is, is, is one of the strongest, most dependable warnings that that's going to happen.

00:31:08.520 You will have heard the expression a front is about to go through. That's another bit of shorthand

00:31:12.200 for the air mass you're in is about to, is about to be kicked out. And whenever that happens,

00:31:16.200 we see big weather changes. Well, the other interesting thing about wind is not only can

00:31:20.060 tell you about weather changes, but going back to your natural navigation can also tell you about

00:31:24.960 your environment and, you know, what's going on around you. Cause like the wind, like it changes

00:31:31.060 as it hits different objects. Like you mentioned earlier, like at the very beginning with the tree,

00:31:35.160 like a tree is breezier right underneath it because there's some wind change going on,

00:31:39.940 some air pressure change. Any other places where people might notice that it might be

00:31:44.420 like, if they're, you know, a hundred feet, it's not, it doesn't feel maybe there's a light breeze.

00:31:49.160 They just walk a hundred feet and then just feels like it's a super strong, like they're in a

00:31:52.500 hurricane almost. Yeah, absolutely. I, I like to think of all of these signs as characters because

00:31:57.980 I think we only develop a relationship and it helps memory and it helps us spot these things.

00:32:02.100 We're human beings. We like relationships. So that's what I'm, I'm, I'm doing quite often is I'm

00:32:07.160 saying I introduced this as a sign because it's going to tell you something, but as you

00:32:10.620 grow to know it and you, you spend time with them, they become characters. And these, these

00:32:15.340 are microclimate wind characters are fantastic because you know, what, what, you know, what you

00:32:20.300 can do today, any day, listen to the forecast. It'll say the wind will be coming, you know,

00:32:25.140 from the Southwest at 15 miles an hour, go for a 10 minute walk. I guarantee you, you will not

00:32:30.060 feel that wind. And if you do, it'll be after feeling about nine other winds. And the reason

00:32:34.620 for that is that again, the forecasters, they're really interested in the, in the, in the weather

00:32:39.280 that's, you know, a hundred feet over our head. That's the closest they can get to us. The

00:32:42.920 second the wind touches the ground, all sorts of other characters are created. A nice simple

00:32:47.960 one is a gap wind. So we've all had that experience where you're walking down a city street and there's

00:32:53.860 a gust of wind and then there's no wind. And then there's the gust of wind and then there's

00:32:57.220 no wind. Well, the wind is just being squeezed between the buildings and that is a gap

00:33:01.000 wind. That character is the gap wind and winds can be squeezed between mountains. I've been

00:33:06.260 thrown all over the place on a small boat when they were squeezed between volcanic islands in

00:33:09.900 the Atlantic, but that same physics works all the way down to two trees. You can be walking along,

00:33:15.780 suddenly feel a small gust and go, well, of course there are two trees there. The wind is,

00:33:19.500 it's like putting a thumb over the end of a hose. The wind is accelerating between the two trees,

00:33:23.820 but that's just one of, you know, a dozen of these local wind characters. And, and as you get to

00:33:28.260 know them, it is actually an important part of the forecasting experience because it's fun just to

00:33:34.720 notice them and go, oh, I know you. Hello, old friend. That's that, you know, that adds a layer

00:33:38.520 to our experience, but in practical telling what's going on, it is important because a sudden cold

00:33:44.620 gust of wind can be a sign of a thunderstorm very near you. But if you know some of the other

00:33:49.460 characters, you go, no, no, no, no, that's, that's not a thunderstorm when I'm feeling there.

00:33:53.520 That's cold air coming down off the side of a hill. That's a different thing. That's a

00:33:57.160 katabatic wind. So we, we, once we know all these little characters, we walk out there and every

00:34:02.440 single day you can meet a few of them. Yeah. I thought some of the most interesting

00:34:06.480 sections of the book, all of it was interesting, but I thought what was really interesting is how

00:34:09.640 cities affect weather. And you talk about the wind, right? The ways, particularly in the United

00:34:13.580 States, how cities are designed on a grid. It creates those tunnels where you get that,

00:34:17.760 it gets really gusty. Any other ways cities influence the weather?

00:34:21.940 Yeah, definitely. I've, I've mentioned how they, they soak up the sun's radiation really,

00:34:26.220 really well. So there's a, an urban heat Island effect. And I think we've all had some experience

00:34:32.020 of that. If you've traveled from a rural area into, into a big city, we instinctively, it's not

00:34:37.800 just the hecticness. It is genuinely a few degrees warmer all around the year, but particularly when

00:34:42.580 it's sunny. And that leads to all sorts of secondary effects. So where anywhere that heats up more than

00:34:48.100 the surrounding areas, it's going to create thermals. So towns create their own clouds. Sometimes it's just

00:34:54.060 a few puffy friendly ones, and it's just fun to notice them, but, but cities can actually create

00:34:58.900 their own rain showers. They'll typically be at the downwind end of the, of the town, or possibly

00:35:04.560 even just downwind of the whole, the whole town or city. The other thing they do is this thermal they

00:35:10.440 create is, is it's invisible to us unless it creates clouds. And then we see them sitting on the

00:35:15.120 top like markers, but it is, it's actually quite a solid in terms of the fluid of air. So when weather

00:35:22.860 is trying to pass over a city and it's got this column of warm air rising up the top of

00:35:27.400 it, it splits the weather. So, you know, there'll be, there'll be a few times if you're, if you're

00:35:32.680 in a high building in a city where you get the kind of view where you can see a little weather

00:35:37.240 system, a few clouds approaching the city and it literally splits and goes around it, you

00:35:41.820 know, like a, like a stream splitting around a rock in the middle of it. But yeah, it's, it's

00:35:46.920 best to assume, you know, every single, not just, not just a city is different to the,

00:35:51.460 to the country, but every building has its own thing. When a wind hits a building, it

00:35:56.000 creates six different winds. So yeah, whichever scale we look at in a town, there are characters

00:36:01.100 to find that.

00:36:02.800 Anything about, you know, let's talk about some other things looking at just plants.

00:36:06.080 Can plants tell us anything about the weather in our area?

00:36:08.980 Yeah, absolutely. The plants is an interesting area. It's quite romantic. And I think if I'm honest,

00:36:15.360 I, you know, I, I, I love the idea of plants whispering to us and telling us things, but

00:36:22.480 I'm, you know, I'm rooted in science. So I'm not, I'm not just going to stick with the folklore

00:36:27.500 that says, oh, that, that pretty little pink plant there when it closes, rain is coming.

00:36:31.260 I want to know, is that true? And if it's true, why, what's going on? So what I've done over

00:36:35.280 the years is, is research what, what works and what doesn't and why, and can we use it? And,

00:36:39.860 and what we've got is two broad areas here. The first is that flowers, for example,

00:36:45.360 are trying to attract insects as pollinators, but it's quite a fragile system. So, so, you know,

00:36:51.760 a fair few of them, you know, there are some daisies I can see where I'm sitting at the moment

00:36:55.000 will react dynamically to light levels, because if there's a sudden drop in light levels,

00:36:59.200 that's a sign that it's about to rain. But this is where I have to be honest. I'm very honest in

00:37:03.200 the book. They are reacting. They don't have some sort of, they're not tapped into some amazing kind

00:37:08.340 of secret computer that knows what's going on. And that, that if they are, that's a conversation

00:37:12.600 for another time. But it, but what I mean is they are reacting. So they are actually reacting to

00:37:16.780 things that we can sense. And, and, and by the time, you know, somebody spent even a few hours

00:37:21.260 thinking about these sorts of signs, they can actually pick up stuff even before the flower

00:37:25.840 has done. But that's not to say it isn't fun to notice it. It's, it's, it's all part of the rich

00:37:30.180 tapestry. But there's another whole area, which I don't think has been tackled before I wrote this book

00:37:35.200 in, in any sort of popular science way, certainly not that I've come across, which is the idea that

00:37:41.080 every plant is telling us something about its climate and its microclimate. And by definition,

00:37:46.080 that is telling us what the future weather conditions are likely to be. So in practical

00:37:51.080 terms, what I encourage people to do in, in the, you know, the most basic practical sense is

00:37:56.660 if you're under a rain shower, have a look at the plants around you, because by definition,

00:38:01.860 a rain shower isn't happening everywhere. It's happening on your patch for a reason. Rain showers

00:38:05.480 happen more in certain places than others, even, even a couple of miles away, there'll be a big

00:38:10.640 difference in terms, we get more, more rain showers on the windward side of hills. We've mentioned

00:38:15.540 cities, that sort of thing. But the plants are picking up on that. And evolution dictates that

00:38:21.920 only, you know, only certain plants are going to survive in certain habitats. So that's what I

00:38:26.300 encourage people to do is, if you notice, you'll start to notice, if you take an interest in these

00:38:30.640 signs, you'll start to notice that rain showers are much more likely in certain places. Then you start

00:38:35.160 to spot the plants there. You go, oh, I'm seeing certain of these sort of wildflowers there,

00:38:39.500 but I don't see them everywhere. Then the next time you see a patch of those wildflowers,

00:38:44.260 our brain is just perfectly kind of engineered to put two and twos together and go,

00:38:48.560 this is a quite likely place for there to be a rain shower if there's one coming in.

00:38:52.720 I thought one interesting plant sign was leaves are typically pointier if it rains a lot in that area.

00:38:59.960 Yes. And that's, that's a lovely, lovely sort of evolutionary sort of sign there where

00:39:04.720 we see all these fantastic shapes around us and our brain is, is overloaded with data and

00:39:11.000 information all day, every day. So there's a temptation to kind of like filter that out and

00:39:14.560 go, well, they're just kind of pretty patterns. They're kind of, but every single shape, every

00:39:18.800 color, everything we sense has meaning. And in that case, the pointy leaves have just evolved to be very

00:39:24.820 good at channeling rainwater off the leaf. You know, water's, water's really heavy on the scale

00:39:29.960 of a leaf, you know, more than a few raindrops, you know, that that's the equivalent of us sort of

00:39:34.300 probably carrying 50 kilograms. They don't want to be doing it. So an evolutionary design makes the

00:39:39.860 leaf pointier if it's having to cope with a lot of rain. What about the sayings? I think everyone's

00:39:44.700 heard about animals being able to predict the weather. So like, you know, if it's storms coming,

00:39:48.780 cows start laying down or roosters start spinning around in circles, anything to that, those things?

00:39:53.780 Yes. And one of my sort of guiding philosophies is nothing is random. And when it comes to the

00:39:59.560 animals, they, anyone who's spent more than a couple of hours outdoors knows that for every minute

00:40:04.940 you're outdoors, the more sensitive you have to be to various things. You know, you can get away with

00:40:09.520 being too cold for a quarter of an hour, you know, dressed inappropriately and everything else,

00:40:14.020 you'll be absolutely fine. You can't do that for three days. And yet a lot of the animals we're

00:40:17.380 talking about are doing it for years or certainly months at a time. So they, they are always

00:40:23.000 adjusting their behavior to, to make the microclimate better for them. So if they're too

00:40:29.180 hot, they'll go under shade, things like that. We all know, but there is some untruths. Cows don't

00:40:35.580 generally lie down before, before rain. I think, I think what's happened there, although I certainly

00:40:39.580 haven't either through my own observations or talking to farmers or looking at the science,

00:40:44.300 I can't find anything solid to back that up. But I think it's a case of, there's a difference

00:40:48.260 between correlation and causation there. So what's happening is we've talked about how the,

00:40:52.400 the clouds grow taller in the afternoon as the thermal set up. Showers are more likely in the

00:40:57.080 afternoon. Cows are often chewing the cud in the afternoon. They like to lie down when they chew the

00:41:01.740 cud. We get showers and cud chewing at the same time. They happen to be lying down. That's, that's

00:41:06.480 the best kind of summary of that. But on a more sort of fun level, all herd animals behave noticeably

00:41:12.740 differently if there's bad weather coming in. Basically, if animals feel threatened by anything,

00:41:17.200 we'll just stick with herd animals for a moment. They will congregate together into a tighter bunch

00:41:21.560 and they will, they will tend to move closer to home in inverted commas, wherever they feel secure.

00:41:26.920 So where I live here, there are lots of sheep farms around me. If the weather is set fair,

00:41:31.460 they're, they're spread out. You know, there's, there's a big gap between each individual sheep and

00:41:35.580 they're all over the tops of the hills. For hours before bad weather hits, the gaps between the

00:41:41.020 animals get smaller and they're, and they're coming down the hill closer to the, to the,

00:41:45.380 the farmstead. But if we take birds, for example, birds are even more sensitive. You know, if a sheep

00:41:52.280 or a cow gets caught in a shower, it's, it's uncomfortable, but it's not life threatening.

00:41:55.900 But, but for the smaller the animal you are, you know, all the way down to butterflies, it can become

00:42:00.540 life threatening. So we tend to find their behavior is much, much more sensitive. So birds change from

00:42:06.060 song to either silence or alarm calls before bad weather hits. And one of my favorite,

00:42:11.020 is, you know, you, you would have picked up. I love when you can put two simple things together

00:42:15.800 and come up with something a bit more exciting. So birds, you'll notice whether it's on rooftops

00:42:20.380 or trees, birds face into wind. Generally it's, it's good. It's good practice. It's more comfortable

00:42:26.960 for them. Their feathers aren't ruffled, but also it's much easier for them to take off into wind.

00:42:30.860 So on average birds face into wind when they're perching. Now we know that a big change in wind

00:42:37.580 direction is going to forecast a major change in weather. So a really fun thing is if you see the

00:42:42.920 birds facing one way in the morning and a different direction in the afternoon within 24 hours, it's

00:42:48.460 probably going to rain. So there's a lot, like you said, there's, you've talked about, there's

00:42:52.580 hundreds of signs you talk about in the book. We've talked about quite a few and this science of like

00:42:57.940 this reading the weather isn't, it's a science, but it's also, it's more of an art. You kind of have to

00:43:02.080 start putting things together layer upon layer for someone who wants to get started with this,

00:43:07.540 like, like today, like after they listen to this podcast, like what are some things that are

00:43:11.420 easy to pick up on quickly to start deciphering the secret world of weather?

00:43:17.400 Yeah, I think, I think you want to look for the, look for the, the big stuff. So shape of clouds and,

00:43:22.700 and wind direction. If you're, if you're interested in noticing big change go through

00:43:27.020 and then pair that with, with the, the microclimate stuff as well. Just take a real interest when you

00:43:32.920 notice a temperature change or, or a slight sort of gust of wind or something like that,

00:43:36.640 and just say to yourself, why has that happened? And don't be frustrated if you can't answer it

00:43:41.400 straight away. The answer is there. Nothing's happened. None of this stuff is random. Nature

00:43:46.400 doesn't really do random. So, so the act of just sort of asking, you know, why have I just felt a

00:43:52.400 gust there? And then maybe the first two or three times the answer won't be obvious, but then you

00:43:56.340 will be, ah, that is a gap wind. And then our brain likes that. Our brain really likes it when

00:44:01.340 we solve small puzzles. It gives us, I'm not a brain scientist, but I'm guessing it's something

00:44:04.980 like dopamine or something like that. We just get a little reward. So that'll, that'll, you know,

00:44:08.940 nudge you on to, to sense the next thing. So have a look at the big stuff, the major sort of wind

00:44:13.880 direction and the cloud shapes, and then ask yourself every single time, you know, over a sort of five

00:44:19.860 minute period when you notice the temperature change, you know, I mean, a really fun thing is just

00:44:24.620 notice how, if you're in direct sunlight, how the temperature changes when you, when you're,

00:44:30.080 when you have something over your head. So if you can get yourself under a tree, but still in sunlight,

00:44:34.420 so you're, you know, if it's the middle of the day, you're likely to be on the south side of the tree

00:44:38.640 and not right up against the trunk, you'll notice how hot you suddenly feel. And there you're,

00:44:44.760 you're putting some pieces together. Okay. The radiation from the sun is warming me up,

00:44:47.880 but it can't escape anywhere through, through convection. That's why it's, it's a few degrees warmer here.

00:44:53.520 I mean, on cold days, that means you can, you can sit out. I sat out in minus two, a couple of,

00:44:58.020 couple of months ago and, and in what I call these, these kind of like sun pockets and you're

00:45:03.560 perfectly comfortable because you're just using these little tools and having fun with it.

00:45:07.460 Well, Tristan, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:45:10.500 and your work? Oh, thanks a lot, Brett. My website, naturalnavigator.com has loads of information

00:45:15.900 about the book and my, my work generally. And I'm, I'm on all the usual social media channels as well.

00:45:21.040 I'm on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, that, that sort of thing. Thanks so much for having me. I

00:45:25.960 really enjoyed the chat. Yeah. Tristan's always a pleasure. My guest today was Tristan Gooley. He's

00:45:30.600 the author of the book, The Secret World of Weather. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:45:34.480 everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at his website, naturalnavigator.com.

00:45:38.900 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash weather. We can find links to resources where

00:45:43.000 we can delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check

00:45:54.140 out our website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands

00:45:58.160 of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you'd like

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00:46:27.780 Until next time, this is Brett McKay. Remind you to not only listen to the AOM podcast, but put

00:46:31.700 what you've heard into action.

00:46:40.440 AOM.

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

How to Predict the Weather (No Apps Required)

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