Reading the Weather

by Thomas Morris Longstreth

So the moon may lie on its back or on its side or stand on its head and the weather will remain dry if no low pressure areas cross the country, and it can lie on its back for days and the country be drowned out if they do. There are enough pretty things to say about the moon, anyway, and will be more all the time for, to commit a paraphrase: Science is stranger than superstition.

“It will rain for forty days straight if it rains on St. Swithin’s Day,” which, I might as well say for the benefit of those who don’t know their saints, falls on July 15th every year. It would be interesting to know how many people in a hundred really believe this, or really believe all the other things that are attributed to the saints,—quite a few, probably. Luckily for St. Swithin July and August are wet months, with often several days of showers or thunderstorms in succession. But never once in Philadelphia has it rained for forty days, one right after another, although half the July 15ths have been rained on. This proverb is one of those that had better never been transplanted from its native Ireland where rain for 40 days would excite scarcely a curse.

“Long and loud singing of robins denotes rain.” It does not. Oftener than not it denotes the time of day. Just watch the robins and listen to them and see what they do before a storm, during it, after it, and then you will see how little the songs of birds can be depended upon to supplant the barometer.

“If March comes in like a lion it will go out like a lamb,” and the other way round. I have seen March come in like a lion and go out like a lion, come in like a lion and go out like a lamb, come in like a lamb and go out like a lion, and come in like a lamb and go out like a Noah’s ark. But I never have seen March do anything dependable. It is quite impossible to tell how March is going out on March 27th, and absolutely impossible to tell on March 1st.

But there is this much observation expressed in the proverb, that March is so changeable that, if it comes in cold, windy, unsettled, there is not so much chance for such weather still to be going on at the end of the month, and still less in England where the proverb came from. This is a harmless proverb unless it should lead people to actually count upon a pleasant spring just because March had an unpleasant inception. Misfortunes rarely come singly, even on the weather calendar.

“When squirrels are scarce in autumn the winter will be severe.” Aside from the scientific truth that the animals cannot know in advance about the seasons there is little evidence on either side to base a contention. Nobody has made a squirrel census; nobody, probably, has found out whether they increase in numbers for six years and then die off in great quantities as do the rabbits in the north country on the seventh; nobody has connected their apparent numbers year after year with the actual severities of the winters. And so nobody has a right to promulgate the report (except as a bit of nonsense like April Fool) that the ensuing winter is going to be a record breaker because the squirrels have disappeared. It would be far truer to say that “When squirrels are scarce in autumn the hunters have been busy,” and let it go at that.

There are a lot of proverbs in this connection about goose bones and hickory nuts and wild geese, which sound plausible but are never proved. If the birds have all the sense credited to them it is strange that some allow themselves to be caught by an early snowstorm in the fall and decimated. Also it is not uncommon for early migrations in the spring to arrive in the north to be slain by the thousand by a belated blizzard. It is granted that animals and birds, having a far greater sensitiveness than man, occasionally sense a catastrophe some hours before it is evidenced by any visual signs, but seasonal wisdom has not been proved in any one instance and disproved in many. None of the proverbs relating to the animals and birds are to be depended upon. They deceive, much to the regret of all the meteorologists who would welcome any genuine clue to nature of the coming season. Any farmer would be only too glad to keep a menagerie of squirrels and wild geese and toads if only he might be assured by them of the coming seasonal conditions.

The proverbs given indicate the range, possibly, but certainly not the full absurdity of the old weather sayings. There are many other proverbs that contain at least a half truth.

“Enough blue sky to make a Dutchman’s breeches indicates clearing,” is one that is true if the wind has changed to the west. If the wind still blows from an easterly quarter blue sky for a Dutchman’s whole wardrobe would not insure clear weather. All sayings must be tested many times before they are believed implicitly.

“There is always a thaw in January,” is about as true a generalization as can be made about things for which generalizations are never strictly in place. Even in Canada the severity of the winter is often broken by a spell of warmer weather with a rain, perhaps, in the dead of winter. In the United States a winter without some break in each of the months would be a most unusual occurrence. So that it is quite reasonable to expect the “January thaw” any time from Christmas until the middle of February.