Weather Eye by Brendan McWilliams

Weather Eye is a selection from the famous column in The Irish Times, which over the years has described and evoked all aspects of that most perennial of subjects for exchange and conversation – the lingua franca of country – and townspersons everywhere. Subjects encompassed include weather in history, weather in literature, weather in folklore, weather in mythology and weather in religion: auguries and forecasting; the science of meteorology; winds, rain, atmospheric pressure, cloud formations; macabre extremes; nomenclature; thoughts on snow, water, fog, dew, hail; thunder and lightning, rainbows and mirages; chroniclers and personalities (from Pepys to William Molyneux, Ben Franklin and Francis Beaufort, Mary Shelley and Percy French); lineaments of air and space; anomalies and optical phenomena; weathermen and weatherwomen.

Weather Eye is a fascinating and authoritative compendium which will interest the serious student and delight the general reader curious about the workings of the world.

‘Wonderful.’ – Customer review

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BRENDAN MCWILLIAMS, born in Dublin in 1944, spent his formative years in County Kerry where his father was in charge of Valentia Observatory. After graduating in Science from University College Dublin in 1964 he joined the Meteorological Service and worked as a weather forecaster, first at Shannon Airport, and later at the Central Analysis and Forecast Office in Dublin. During the 1970s he was a regular presenter of the daily weather forecast on RTE television.

Since 1990 he has been Assistant Director of the Meteorological Service and his daily ‘Weather Eye’ column for The Irish Times, begun in 1988, has become one of the most popular features of that newspaper.