The 12th edition of the venerable weather reference title, The Weather Almanac, was published in 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, after a long run as a Gale Publication. The new editor is Steven L. Horstmeyer, the chief meteorologist at WXIX‐Channel 19 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The 12th edition is a hefty book, weighing in at 5.54 pounds.
Over the years the content of this reference book has transformed as different aspects of climatology and meteorology have changed. New to this edition are chapter 2 on Renewable Energy and chapter 7, Global Warming and Climate Change. Additionally, Horstmeyer has restructured other chapters to bring hard to find information and data together in one spot and that is the great value of The Weather Almanac. In this era of quick information available on the Internet, this publication brings all the disparate weather information one could hope for into one source. Horstmeyer has done yeoman work in editing this resource for libraries and weather geeks all over the world.
This edition provides a plethora of maps, graphs and aerial photographs of storms and other weather events. Readers will also find chronologies of extreme weather and checklists of what steps to take in extreme winter weather. At 1,130 pages, this edition is chock full of weather information and titbits. Chapter 11 is, according to Horstmeyer, the only timeline of meteorology, beginning in 9000 BCE and going up to 2000 CE. He begins where one might expect, with the cultivation of wild wheat and barley as humans transitioned from hunting and gathering to farming. He ends with The Jet Stream Era, starting with the 1940s/1950s, a period in which regular meteorological discoveries were made, through to today.
The largest section of the book is taken up by chapter 10, Local Climatological Data Annual Summaries 2009. These are detailed summaries of data collected at 128 observation stations in each state, Washington, DC and Puerto Rico. Here one will find a chart of normal, means and extremes regarding a number of weather categories, such as temperature, cloudiness, winds, precipitation and snowfall. Here one can learn that the highest temperature recorded in Burlington, Vermont was 101F in August 1944, while the lowest temperature was −30F, last reached in February 1979. Each weather station listing also includes a brief narrative providing an overview of the climate in that area.
Horstmeyer contributed the new chapter 2 on renewable energy with a narrative section that includes definitions. Most of the chapter is devoted to wind and solar energy. There are numerous tables and maps that will be useful to readers and again, having these brought together in one book makes this invaluable. One interesting section is devoted to city wind roses and wind speed frequency histograms. With this one can see that the prevailing winds in Austin, Texas come from the south and southeast and we learn that the average wind speed is 8.8 mph. Chicago, Illinois may be known as the “Windy City” with an average wind speed of 10.4 mph, yet Wichita, Kansas may be a contender for the title with an average wind speed of 12.1 mph. Of additional interest in this chapter are the maps that provide the Mean Annual Total Hours of Sunshine where one can learn that nearly the entire state of Arizona receives over 3,400 annual hours of sunshine.
The other new chapter, Global Warming and Climate Change, is always a controversial topic and here Horstmeyer attempts to bring together material that will be of use to a reader looking for information on climate change, but he notes that he did not include any forecasts for future climates. In this chapter he discusses the greenhouse effect, forcing mechanisms and feedback loops, climate research, and predicting future climates. This chapter provides an excellent introduction to climate studies, with a number of charts, graphs and tables.
The number of tables, charts, photographs, and other graphic material is impressive, and can be overwhelming, but these types of visuals are vital to the understanding of weather and necessary for users to have at their fingertips. Horstmeyer typically provides the source of the data, allowing a user to go to the original document or website.
While The Weather Almanac focuses primarily on weather in the US, chapter 9 deals with weather and climate data from other areas of planet Earth. This chapter provides data based on information from 321 weather stations, covering virtually every nation. These tables provide information on average maximum/minimum temperature, record maximum/minimum temperature, average precipitation in inches (including rain days and thunder days) and average snow in inches (including snow days).
Several indexes provide additional access to the data, including an index of acronyms and abbreviations, general index, index of persons, and index of select storms and events. With the latter index one can find pages for a weather event as famous as Hurricane Andrew (1992) or as obscure as the Schoolhouse Blizzard in 1888.
The Weather Almanac was first published in 1974. It keeps getting better and more complete. This 12th edition has added new material, while keeping and updating the information that many librarians, researchers and interested laypeople have used for years. The biggest drawback is that it was published in 2011, meaning that the most recent data is either 2010 or 2009. If one wants more current data, they will need to go to the original data source, most likely on the Internet. Still, no other source brings together so much weather data in one place and that cannot be underestimated nor taken lightly.
