How California’s weather shapes the state and its people
… William A. Selby’s comprehensive account of California’s varied meteorological phenomena, multitudinous microclimates and seasonal extremes, “The California Sky Watcher: Understanding Weather Patterns and What Comes Next,” solves many such mysteries of the climate that creates — and is created by — the state’s landscape and civilization. Raised in Santa Ana, Selby is a retired Santa Monica College professor who has conducted research for the National Weather Service. His latest book, complete with helpful, dizzying and sobering diagrams and photographs, could easily serve as the text for a college earth science course. It takes a thoroughly empirical approach to California’s four seasons and their manifestation across its myriad topographies.