Book Review: "Predicting Weather Events with Astrology" by Kris Brandt Riske, MA

When I saw this title I was totally intrigued. I knew that astrology was capable of doing many different things—personality traits, compatibility, health and healing, predictions of future events—but one thing I didn’t know was about astrometeorlogy, or the branch of astrology that deals with predicting the weather.

Choosing to review Predicting Weather Events with Astrology was a no brainer for me. I’m a fan of Kris Brandt Riske’s work; her Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Astrology and Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Predictive Astrology are two of my favorite astrology books. So I knew it was going to have that fantastic blend of the basics combined with lots of example charts.

One of the first questions I had was how it all works. The introduction gave it to me straight: “Planets do not cause the weather; they reflect weather conditions. In this way, astrometeorology is much like meteorology. […] The difference is that one is an art and one is a science.” The author’s bio also refers to a “certificate in weather forecasting from Penn State”, and establishes her credentials before the book even begins.

The astrological planets, of course, have different meanings depending on which branch of astrology you’re working in. Saturn in a person’s chart can indicate the level of self-discipline of a person, for example, while Saturn has a number of fairly nasty medical astrology applications. In astrometeorology, Saturn rules slow-moving storms and more “prolonged weather events”. With Saturn’s tendency to rule long-term goals and activities, this isn’t a surprise. But you’ll get a nice introduction to all the astrological planets in this branch of astrology. Day to day, you’ll be looking at the personal planets, but the further out you go, the more you’re dealing with long-term weather patterns.

I especially liked the small section on the astrometeorlogical effect of eclipses. Riske tells us that hard aspects from latitudes and longitudes of an ingress chart to an eclipse often presage major weather events that happen six to twelve months afterward.

I also liked the quick aspects guide. Aspects, the relationships between planets in a chart, are essential to accurate interpretations, and Riske includes a quick reference chart so you can immediately have an idea of what weather is produced with “easy” (like a sextile or trine) or “hard” (like a square or opposition) relationships between the planets. Pluto, for example, brings up the intensity of any weather situation that he happens to be involved in.

This is not a book that I would recommend to beginner astrology students, who might feel out of their depth unless they’re looking for a true challenge. But if you’re an intermediate level astrology student, you’ll be able to gain quite a bit from this book.

Honestly, this is one of the most interesting astrology books I’ve read in a long time. It makes me want to start doing some astrometeorlogy of my own for my neck of the woods; our local weather forecasters have really struggled of late, so maybe applying some of the techniques in Predicting Weather Events with Astrology will help me figure out what’s really going to happen.