The book is a sort of diary: one page for every day of the year, detailing unusual weather events that happened on that day.

I found it interesting, but a little hard to absorb – although the weather has a gradual pattern throughout the year, it jumps from gales to snow to dazzling sunshine. Lots of good facts, but I wonder if a more traditional narrative structure might have been easier to follow. (I couldn’t read more than two or three weeks worth of weather at a time.) And because it’s only a page per day, I often went off to Google for more detail than the structure allowed.

It covers a wide range of events: from disasters, historical invasions, sports, to smaller, more local affairs. I’m not usually a sporting fan, but even that material grabbed me. (I particularly love the idea of a goalkeeper waiting in fog for twenty minutes, before a police officer comes to tell them the game was cancelled… fifteen minutes ago.)

A fun read, but best read in fits and bursts, not cover-to-cover.

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