Monday, October 3, 2016

Nature's Weather Predictors





We’ve had a very hot September where I live. I think it hit 90 degrees almost every day. Yesterday I saw an all-black woolly worm. 

That got me to thinking. Who do you put your belief in – the weatherman or nature’s weather predictors?

There are weather predictors and weather folklore. Here are a few I have come across from the internet and from friends and relatives.

Of course, there is the wooly worm. The larger the light brown band, the milder the winter.

“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.”

Frogs – They say frogs croak louder and longer when bad weather is on the horizon.

Cattle – They say when cows begin to swat flies and lie down in the fields, a storm is coming.

“Wind from the south brings rain in its mouth”

Crickets – If you count the number of times a cricket chirps in 14 seconds, add 40 and you will get an estimate of the air temperature. 

Pine Cones – When air is dry, pine cones open up and their scales stand out to allow their seeds to be picked up and blown by the wind.  (When I craft with pine cones, I always heat them in a low temp oven – in addition to killing bugs, it opens up the pine cone)

Bees – if you don’t see many bees around, a rain is coming. They sense the humidity in the air and stay home.

Fish – Fish tend to be more active before a storm.

“When ladybugs swarm, expect a day that’s warm.” 

A hazy ring around the sun or moon in summer is a sign that the weather pattern is in for a change – usually bringing rain.

“Clear moon, frost soon.” (Yep, I agree with this one. A clear, windless spring night, usually means we will have a frost.)

Moon – When the moon’s perigee and the full moon occur on the same day, watch for terrible storms. 

Fogs – For every fog in August there will be a snowfall in winter. (We had a lot of fogs in August)

A green Christmas, a white Easter.

Squirrels - A tough winter is ahead if a squirrel’s tail is bushy.

Have you heard of these?
Do you have some of your own to add to the list?

 

3 comments:

  1. These are very familiar to me--weatherlore is a hobby of mine :) A few more: dew on the grass means no rain that day, wind from the south has rain in its mouth, a February fog means a late frost. Love this stuff!

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  2. This was fun, and probably not too far off.

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  3. I love the old folk sayings about weather--and other things. I don't know that we've ever had a white Easter, that I can recall, but it is still interesting to think about these old sayings. We ended up with 7 fogs in August, so I'm going to see if that prediction is right.

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