John D. Cox (1) (1943–)

3.5 stars

The title (and if you know the series) pretty much tells you about this one. It explains weather in a simplified way. From the front of the book: “Explore how weather is forecast; Get a close-up look at clouds, storms, and seasons; Understand how climate affects weather”.

I thought it was good, but it didn’t have as much humour as the other “For Dummies” books I’ve read; I usually really like the humour, so I missed that. In all honesty, even though it was simplified, I still had trouble fully understanding some of the explanations and had to reread a few paragraphs more than once. Even so, I definitely learned things. Did you know they always take temperature readings in the shade? Meteorology is harder than rocket science (with the latter often being held up as something you need to be super-smart to do), because “rocket scientists” study space outside Earth’s atmostphere, which is a lot calmer and doesn’t constantly change like our atmosphere and weather does closer to the ground. Those are just a couple of things that stuck in my head.

There was some repetition but that’s because it is meant to be a reference, so you don’t need to read it front to back; the repetition didn’t bother me, but I wanted to mention it for others. There is (in the 2nd edition that I have) a section of colour photos in the middle. Every so often, I’ve thought it would be so interesting to be a meteorologist; LOL! There is no way when I have a hard time understanding the simplified explanations! (As interesting as it might actually be.)… (meer)