A dark blue sky tells of wind, and probably rain to follow; a light blue sky is of fair weather.
All over bright or gaudy colours at sunrise or sunset, and all hard outlines, foretell rain and wind. Delicate colours, well-blended tones and filmy cloud edges are fine-weather prophets.
Rings round the sun or moon, and vivid twinkling stars in the later night, are bad signs. Clear nights of cold, and calm and quiet stars before dawn, are good.
Heavy dews and the falling of the wind at sunset are good signs.
The clearness and nearness of distant hills, except just after rain, is a bad sign; but here we may distinguish between a clear landscape when we face towards the sun, which is an ill sign, and a clear landscape as we stand with our back to the sun, which is quite usually a fair sign.
Ascending mists on hillsides are bad. Mists in valleys at evening, clouds lifting at sunset, and hilltops smoking their pipe of evening peace, are good.
Warm airs as we pass up the lower alps or through the pinewoods mean us well; but warm nights on the height and in the hut, or the sickly puffs of warm breath that meet us from the large crevasses as we start up the glacier before dawn, are omens of ill weather.
Early rain, ‘rain before seven,’ has no serious meaning; it rarely lasts.
Early white mists should never frighten us from starting, but we must judge them by feel, texture and direction of movement. An early ominous mist has a different quality, and lies differently from a simple mist of the hour.
During the day feeling or instinct is still our principal guide as to the durable character of changes or of threats of changes. More especially we go by the feeling of the wind. With a good wind, local clouds may be disregarded. The eye learns to distinguish between the heavy leaden-edged look of an increasing mist, and the peculiar silvery wet aspect, markedly round its edges, of a mist that is in process of absorption in warm atmosphere.