This month’s Crappy Old Book of the Month is Instant Weather Forecasting by Alan [not the philosopher] Watt (1968).

A 24-colour photograph guide to weather forecasting from the clouds for use by farmers, fishermen, yachtsmen, golfers, holidaymakers, in fact anyone to whom the weather in the near future is of vial importance.

I have a pretty good idea what you are thinking. “Why on God’s Green Earth would I need to have and read this crappy old book when I have an iThingy?”

Hahahahaha. Because your iThingy is wrong, Chief! And because many of you don’t even have reception on your iThingies when you are here at the Farm. What makes you think you’ll have reception when you’re out on your yacht?

Let’s look first at the claim your iThingy is wrong. That’s not strictly true. Your iThinky is reporting information from one or more “weather services” which predict what the weather will be like during the next several hours. Predictions can be wrong and they often are. I have a whole category tag filled with posts on how wrong “they” are. Remember when one weather service was telling me it was BOTH 83º AND 66º at the same time? Here’s an example from this morning:

Have you ever seen a thunderstorm occurring under a cloudless sky? And this is from the most reliable weather service!

To be fair, the clear sky thunderstorm could be due to a failure of the radar image to load properly. This is reason #2 to learn how to read the clouds. Who you gonna trust? weather dot gov, com, net, ch or your own lyin’ eyes? What are you going to do when the power goes out and you– you without a generator– can’t recharge your iThingy and therefore cannot check those fallible weather predicting services? You won’t even be able to call me!

So this month we are going to examine Instant Weather Forecasting because when push comes to shove wouldn’t you really rather rely on yourself than some iThingy that doesn’t even know what the sky looks like?

Now available in paperback

Or the traditional crappy old version