weather for photographers

Has anyone come across any good books on this subject? In particular, I'm trying to understand how the British weather works, what the recurring patterns are in our months, what to look out for for fog in the morning, great sunsets, lightning, how to read those darned weather maps, where to find data about the height of clouds over the UK at any point... etc

The Cloudspotter's Guide (forgotten the author) is an excellent, and entertaining, place to begin.

The Rough Guide to the weather is also excellent, and a more thorough overview - though not solely UK focused.

For the weather you can try Wolfram, it doesn't show cloud height though but other interesting things.

interesting piece of weather trivia from a Meteorological Physics course which I took as an undergrad.

A challenge was once held between the Met office and a group of students. The Met office used all the tools at their disposal to produce a weather forcast which was accurate ~62% of the time.

The students went with the theory that "tomorrow will be roughly the same as today", and achieved an accuracy rating of 61%.


I liked my Meteorological Phyiscs course, partly because it was interesting, but mostly because ALL of the maths is so mindbending that it can't be solved without a supercomputer. This limited the choice of exam questions!

I think it is Gavin Prettor Pinney.

It is a good book that. I have a copy of it somewhere.


In the UK, fog is mostly Autumn, Lightning mostly summer,
sunsets at dusk and rain all year

I found the Observers book of weather {Published absolutely ages ago)very useful, It was small enough to fit in a pocket and up to the usual Observer series standard. O.k some illustrations are a bit dated but a darned useful book non the less.

Regards - Pete

For a simple explanation I recommend 'Weather at Sea' by David Houghton (Fernhurst). It's marine-oriented but most of the principles apply over land.

Incidentally a good weather site I use for any outdoor activity is http://theyr.tv - it has hour-by-hour charts of precipitation, wind & cloud cover for the next 2-3 days, and covers Europe and North America. It was free when I signed up though there may be a charge now.

Stan

The easiest way to understand english weather is to understand that even the Uk weather forecasters DONT HAVE A CLUE!

After that work on what you see........................


Paul

Enjoy the read but don't count on it proving useful. Last night I checked 3 different weather forecasts for Snowdonia, all said "clear and sunny" from dawn this morning....guess what I saw when I arrived, cloud everywhere !!
Unfortunately from my experiences landscape photography is about spending many wasted days/hours trying to catch the best light...it does make it all the more special though when you get the shot you were hoping for. I just wish that those petrol prices would come down to make the wasted trips a little less painful!!

simon

One of the problems the weather forecasters have is that they are usually dealing with a large area. Get a good local forecast by someone whom knows the area and how the land effects the general weather conditions and he can be very accurate.
You used to be able to ring the met Met man at RAF Valley and you could set your watch by the changes in the weather he forecast in Snowdonia. Mind you he would only give you 24 hours max. But he knew how the land would affect the weather in different places. For instance, you will often get a better day on the Carneddau than on Snowdon when the weather is coming from the west cos the rain has already fallen out of the clouds as they rise and cool over Snowdon leaving what is left of the clouds to pass over the top of the Carneddau!

These are great, thank you!

Stanovich, that's a great site

Simon, this is precisely the reason I'm trying to find some books on the subject - so that I can understand and make my own predictions rather than relying on everyone else.

I just wish though that there was a site somewhere that'd give you a vertical map of cloud levels across the UK. Ie what height they all were. And wouldn't it be great if there was a site that you could use to generate your own custom alerts. Ie if wind from south and only high cloud cover look out for a spectacular sunset ==> email alert!

Nass - aviation forecasts do exactly that. Doing-the-Bobs is on the right track. Not sure if they are publicly accessible in the UK as in Oz, although I would assume they are.

They are generally of two broad sorts - area forecasts, and met reports and short-term forecasts for specific places. Both tell you about temperature, cloud (amount of cover, type, level/s), wind, other weather phenomena of significance etc. The beauty of aviation forecasts is that they abide by ICAO conventions, meaning they are globally consistent. There is a fair bit of abbreviation and acronym use in them, but once you get that sorted, you're away.

Hope this helps in your quest.

I have found the Met Office App for iPhone to be very useful. Forecasts for the next few days, plus weather and satellite maps.

Thanks... no iphone

You've also apps for other type of phones, I've standard a weather forecast for my location and besides that I can access a app that shows my a satellite image with animation of cloud-cover and where it rains. You can often make a good guess with that.

What do you use?