The Weather Detective (book review)

Back in January I wrote a glowing review of The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. I'd read it when Lee-Anne was going in for surgery for an intracranial observation of her epilepsy. I was stressed out and wanted something to distract myself with. A book about tree trivia seemed to be just about what I was looking for.

I had recently read Staring at the Sun, a book about mortality, and Bittersweet, which covered the merits of sadness. I'd been soul searching but didn't have the mental capacity for it at this point in my life. So I was surprised when the tree trivia book beat out the other two in terms of spiritual fulfillment.

Earlier this year, Lee-Anne went in for her first set of two surgeries to potentially cure her epilepsy. So it felt right to open up another Wohlleben book.

I had found three more at an Indigo, The Heartbeat of Tree, The Power of Trees, and The Weather Detective. I chose the latter, as it seemed the most different from the one I'd read.

Having finished it, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I learned lots of really cool trivia that I have since shared with others, clearing up misconceptions that I didn't know that I had. For example, I had never really thought about why clouds appear black before they're about to storm. In retrospect, it makes sense that the water they are made of does not literally change hue. The raindrops do not have the appearance of oil as they hit the Earth. But I guess I was told as a child that clouds darken before a storm and never thought to question it as an adult.

Turns out, they're just tall. As water build up, it gets more difficult for sunlight to work its way through, so the clouds begin to look black. As they get larger, the top layer eventually gets to a cold enough part of the atmosphere that it begins to freeze. This causes the vapour to harden and become too heavy to float, so it falls in the form of hail, usually melting on the way and dragging down the bottom layers with it.

This is also why you sometimes get hail but not snow in harsh but otherwise temperate storms. They're just coming down fast enough that they didn't have a chance to thaw. I learned that water droplets will bob up and down in the atmosphere as they harden. If you store a piece of hail in a freezer and cut it open later, you will find a series of rings. By counting them, you can figure out how many trips it took between the top few cloud layers before falling. This is a similar method to figuring out how old a tree was by looking at the interior circles of its stump.

I also learned that heat rises in pillars, and certain birds follow them to get the benefit of lift. By doing this, they can stay airborne without needing to expend energy by flapping. This brought me back to a time about ten years previous, when I was working my first year at the Summer Program. I was watching some turkey vultures and noticed that, no matter how long I observed them, they never seemed to flap.

My manager at the time noticed what I was doing and asked what I was thinking. When I told him, he joked that I was part of the "Birds Aren't Real" movement, an (I think) satyrical belief that birds have been replaced with government drone.

That isn't what I thought, I was just curious how they could fly without flapping. Now, ten years later I have the answer, thanks to The Weather Detective.

I have felt compelled to repeat these facts to friends and family in my personal life. So it's not like this book is less rich in information than Hidden Life of Trees. It elicits the same feeling of excitement of discovery, and I'm happy to have read it, but still... the reading experience was just less enjoyable.

In my first experience of his work, Wohlleben really shined by speaking compassionately and emotively from the perspective of trees. You just can't convincingly do that with weather. While awesome in its own regard, clouds and wind are just more mechanical in nature.

The premise of The Weather Detective is to encourage people to learn how to predict weather without needing to look at media forecasts. In this way, we humans can awaken many of our senses that we have learned to neglect. While this is a neat endeavor, he seems to lose focus partway through the book and just start talking about whatever he feels like, such as the ethics of birdfeeders.

I know that this isn't wholly separate from the weather, but if that counts, then everything in his previous book would fit under that lofty definition.

I also think he's just more of a tree guy. There are a few points where plantlife comes up, and I just wanted to scream "Yes! Keep talking about that! It's what you're good at!"

Even when it comes to animals, he doesn't speak as empathetically as he does with trees. In Hidden Life, he does cover the necessity of competition in nature, and "the contract with life" that we all need to make, understanding that our continued existence comes at the expense of others. However, he also talked about the way trees work together to form a canopy, lend nutrients to their neighbours even if they're rivals, support their weaker peers, and collaborate with each other to make long-term decisions that can span centuries. They show sentimentality, provide mentorship, and support the world at large. By the time I was finished that book, I was filled with awe and had an urge to go forest bathing.

But in The Weather Detective, the way he talks about animals fills me with existential dread. Some of the phrasing sounds creepily close to eugenics, and by the end of the book I'm pondering the ethics of being able to feed myself.

If asked in isolation if I'd recommend The Weather Detective, the answer would be an enthusiastic "Yes!" The book is full of enlightening information that you will take with you. But if you're reading it as a follow up to The Hidden Life of Trees, then I would still give my approval but caution you that the experience might be less enjoyable.