March is a peculiar month—the month of what is termed, and aptly termed, “unsettled weather.” It, may “come in like a lion,” or be variable at the outset. The northern transit is fairly started, and is progressing rapidly, and there is great magnetic irritability. A reference to the table of Dr. Lamont will show that the declination has increased with great rapidity. Normally, the early part is like the latter part of February, and the latter part approaches the milder but still changeable weather of April. Its distinguishing feature is violent westerly wind. Not the regular N. W. only—although that is prevalent—but a peculiar westerly wind, ranging from W. by N. to N. W. by W., often blowing with hurricane violence. This wind was alluded to on page 130. With the change and active transit to the north, in February and in March, comes the tendency to diseases of the respiratory organs—pneumonias and lung fevers—and this is the most dangerous period of the year for aged people.
April is a milder and more agreeable month. During some period of it, in normal seasons, and at other times in March, there is a warm, quiet, genial, “lamb-”like spell, exceedingly favorable for oat seeding. When it comes, advantage should be taken of it, for long heavy N. E. storms are liable to occur, and frequently with snow. On the latitude of 41° heavy snow-storms are not uncommon in April. Within the last fifteen years two such have occurred after the 10th of the month. April, as we have seen, should be cool and moist. If dry, the early crops are endangered by a spring drouth; if very wet, there is danger of an extreme northern transit, and an early summer drouth. It is emphatically true that
“April and May are the keys of the year.”
Its distinguishing peculiar feature is the gentle, warm, trade rains—“April showers”—which, in the absence of great magnetic irritability, that current drops upon us. There is great mean magnetic activity, but it is not so irregularly excessive as in March.
May, in our climate, should be, and normally is, a wet month, and a cool one, considering the altitude of the sun. The atmospheric machinery which the sun moves is, however, ordinarily about six weeks behind it—the latter reaching the tropic the 20th of June, and the former its farthest northern extension about six weeks later. Hence it is not a cause for alarm if May be wet and cool. The great staples, wheat, grass, and oats, are benefited; and corn, according to the proverb, will not be seriously retarded. The movable belt of excessive magneto-electric action, with its tropical electric rains, so exciting to vegetation, and its periods or terms of excessive heat, is on its way north, and sure to arrive in season, and remain long enough to mature the corn. There have been but two seasons in this century when corn did not mature in the latitude of 41°. One during the cold decade, and the cold part of it, between 1815 and 1820; and the other, during the cold half of the fourth decade, between 1835 and 1840.
The distinguishing feature, if there be one, of May, is its long, and, for the season, cool storms. These have, in different localities, different names. In pastoral sections we hear of the “sheep storms”—those which effect the sheep severely when newly shorn—killing them or reducing them in flesh by their coldness and severity.
In relation to this too early shearing, there is an old English proverb, in “Forster’s Collection,” viz.:
“Shear your sheep in May,
And you will shear them all away.”
So there are others called “Quaker storms,” which occur about the time when that estimable sect hold their yearly meeting. And there are other names given in different localities to these long spring storms. But they are all mere coincidences—equinoctial and all.
Notwithstanding the storms, however, the temperature rises at a mean. The declination is often as great as in mid-summer. The earth is growing warmer by the increase of magneto-electric action, whatever the state of the atmosphere. The yellow, sickly blade of corn is extending its roots and preparing to “jump” when the atmosphere becomes hot, as it is sure to do, when the machinery attains a sufficient altitude, how backward soever it may seem to be. The farmer need not mourn over its backwardness, unless the season is a very extraordinary one, like those of 1816 and 1836. The storms ensure his hay, wheat, and oat crops; the warming earth is at work with the roots of his corn, and is filling with water, and preparing for the hot and rapidly-evaporating suns of mid-summer. The earth would grow warmer if every day was cloudy.