Weather lore and proverbs arose in response to the need to accurately predict the weather in predominantly agricultural societies. Before the invention of instruments to measure temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure, people relied on close observations and associations made over an extended period of time. Most proverbs are reliable short-term weather predictors simply because plants and animals are sensitive and responsive to changes in temperature, air pressure, wind direction, and cloud cover.
For thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans on American shores, Native Americans predicted the weather by observing the behavior of animals and plants, wind direction, the color of the sky at different times of day, and atmospheric events such as rainbows and halos around the sun and moon. European settlers arrived with their own folklore from the Old World, which was adapted to reflect local conditions and combined with native lore.
Weather folklore is focused on the region in the middle latitudes, roughly between 30° and 60° north and south of the equator, where can be found a day-to-day variability in the weather. Weather refers to short-term changes in temperature and precipitation, rather than long-term climatic trends. People whose livelihoods depended on the environment were greatly concerned with determining what weather lay ahead. The mildness or harshness of the coming winter was the most crucial meteorological knowledge that could be obtained, and much weather lore focused on forecasting winter’s length and severity.
Weather Almanacs
The most enduring weather forecasting tradition brought to America from Europe is the almanac. Almanacs contain annual weather forecasts, planting tables, and tips for weather prognostication. Appearing in Germany in the early sixteenth century, almanacs quickly spread across the continent to England. Early almanac writers based their predictions on astrology, the Christian calendar, and pure speculation derived from local observations. Since weather proverbs only applied to local conditions, almanacs brought from Europe were fairly useless in the New World. When America’s first printing press began production in 1638, the second document printed was Captain William Pierce’s Almanac Calculated for New England in 1639. Indispensable for early farmers and mariners, the almanac provided tables for planting crops, calculating tides, and predicting astronomical events. Benjamin Franklin, who was a businessman as well as a scientist, tapped into the new American market with his Poor Richard’s Almanack. First published in 1732, Poor Richard’s Almanack remained a best seller until 1758, circulating up to 10,000 issues per year. As a scientist, Franklin was aware that astrological forecasting was hokum, but he created whimsical forecasts for amusement.
In 1792, The Farmer’s Almanac continued where Poor Richard’s left off, and it is still in print today as The Old Farmer’s Almanac—the longest continually published periodical in North America. This annual publication dispenses a year’s worth of weather forecasts, lunar and solar charts, household advice, anecdotes, recipes, and other ephemera. The founder, Robert B. Thomas, studied solar activity, astronomy cycles, and weather patterns to develop his secret forecasting formula. The original formula is still locked away in the almanac corporate office, but it has been tweaked over the years. The editors claim an 80 percent accuracy rate using their formula, which combines modern scientific methods with ancient weather wisdom.
The Pennsylvania Town and Country-Man’s Almanack of 1756 provided weather information to its readers that ranged from reasonable to wildly inaccurate. In an era before modern scientific instruments, weather prediction was a guessing game, typically based on folk wisdom and even superstition. (Getty Images)
Common Weather Proverbs
Many somewhat accurate proverbs are based on observations of wind and atmospheric conditions, but these tend to be very short-term and local. For example,
When leaves show their undersides, be sure that rain betides.
This could mean that a rainstorm is approaching, because storms generate windy downdrafts that will flip the leaves on a tree upside down. This is a very short-term prediction. If an oncoming front is causing the leaves to turn, you can expect rain within thirty minutes.
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.
There are many regional variations of this saying, which is generally accurate. Weather systems in the United States tend to move from west to east. The sky appears red as light passes through the atmosphere when the sun is low on the horizon. A red sky in the evening is an indicator of a high-pressure system moving in, which generally brings fair weather. A red sky in the morning is caused by light reflecting through clouds moving in from the west, which could be bringing bad weather.
When dew is on the grass, rain will never come to pass.
Dew forms during nighttime cooling, most often on cloudless, still nights. When there is little wind and the skies are clear, rain is unlikely.
When halo rings the moon or sun, rain’s approaching on the run.
A halo forms around the sun or moon when light from each is refracted off ice crystals at high altitudes. This high-level moisture is a precursor to moisture moving in at lower altitudes too—a good indication that an active weather system is moving in.
A year of snow, crops will grow.
This saying merely indicates that a snowy winter will provide enough moisture for spring crops. A good snow cover also insulates against unusually frigid air and cycles of freezing and thawing that are ruinous to crops like winter grains. Similarly,
As the days lengthen, so the cold strengthens.
This merely recognizes that January and February are usually the coldest months, even though the days begin to increase in length after the winter solstice on December 21.
A coming storm your shooting corns presage, aches will throb, your hollow tooth will rage.
Many people find this effect to be true, but researchers are not entirely convinced. It does appear, however, that a drop in air (barometric) pressure will cause blood vessels to dilate slightly, aggravating irritated nerves in arthritic joints and near corns and cavities. Individuals suffering from sinus troubles will feel the changes in air pressure in their sinus cavities.
Fact and Myth in Weather Lore
While many weather proverbs contain evidence of close observation and reasoning, a greater number tend to form conclusions from limited observations. One of the most enduring pieces of fabulous weather lore involves Groundhog Day, which falls on February 2.
If the groundhog sees its shadow, thirty days of winter remain. If not, spring will follow immediately.
Annual records show that the groundhog’s prediction is correct half of the time. It is purely chance, and just as likely to be untrue on any given year.
Cats and dogs eat grass before a rain.
Cats and dogs do occasionally eat grass, which is a harmless activity. It has nothing to do with the weather, and more to do with the fact that neither animal is strictly carnivorous.
Rain before seven, clear by eleven.
Rains come with weather fronts that pass at any time of the day and have varying durations. Early-morning rain is not a predictor of a dry afternoon.
Onion skins very thin, mild winter coming in. Onion skins thick and tough, coming winter cold and rough.
Squirrels gathering nuts in a flurry will cause snow to gather in a hurry.
These verses, and many others like them, attempt to predict long-range weather conditions. It is also a common belief that thick fur and bushy tails on dogs, squirrels, bears, and other animals indicate a harsh winter coming. In actuality, it says more about the animal’s health and diet prior to the onset of winter. Another trusted prognosticator is the woolly bear caterpillar. It is commonly believed that if its brown stripes are narrower than the black, the approaching winter will be cold and blustery. In actuality, the width of the stripes is due to genetics and environmental conditions while the caterpillar is growing.
Woolly Bear Festival
The myth of the woolly bear caterpillar and its ability to predict the severity of the coming winter is so abiding that it has fostered regional festivals celebrating the insect and its prodigious powers of prognostication. Rather like Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, a hamlet best known for the predictions of the eponymous groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, the meteorological marmot that gained popular immortality through the 1993 cult favorite film Groundhog Day, the sleepy town of Vermillion, Ohio, annually plays host to thousands of visitors to its Woolly Bear Festival. Founded in 1972 in nearby Birmingham, the festival features an impressive parade, a race, costume contests, and many vendors; the Woolly Bear Festival claims to be the largest single-day fair in Ohio, and has been hosted by iconic local weatherman Dick Goddard ever since its inception. A similar Woolly Worm Festival in North Carolina has been around for nearly as long.
C. Fee
Plants and trees are sensitive to the weather and its changes, but they also only display traits caused by past and current growing conditions. They cannot prepare for the future. Folklorists may read a heavy supply of berries and fruits on plants in the fall as a warning that a harsh winter is coming. Animals will leave the extra fruit for when snow blankets the ground. In reality, there was simply good weather when the plants were pollinated in the spring, making an ample fruit crop in the fall.
Some weather proverbs are silly, some are accurate, and some are questionable. One thing those still in use today all have in common is that they are lighthearted, interesting, and easy to remember. Weather prediction myths have stood the test of time only because they rely on selective memory. People tend to remember when a prediction comes true, and conveniently forget when it does not.
Jill M. Church
See also Drought Buster; Groundhog Day; Superstitions
Further Reading
Garriott, Edward B. 1971. Weather Folklore and Local Weather Signs. LaVergne, TN: Kessinger.
Horvitz, Leslie A. 2007. The Essential Book of Weather Lore: Time-Tested Weather Wisdom and Why the Weatherman Isn’t Always Right. Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest Association.
Laskin, David. 1996. Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather. New York: Doubleday.
Kingsbury, Stewart A., Mildred E. Kingsbury, and Wolfgang Mieder, eds. 1996. Weather Wisdom: Proverbs, Superstitions, and Signs. New York: Peter Lang.
Weather Prediction Myths—Primary Document
“Prognostications of the Weather” in Robert Merry’s Museum (1844)
The following excerpt is taken from the opening of “Prognostications of the Weather” in Robert Merry’s Museum, a nineteenth-century children’s magazine. It identifies a number of folk traditions regarding weather prediction. In the preindustrial world, most people engaged in farming, which made weather forecasting a critical, though seriously flawed, enterprise. Forecasters relied on cloud patterns, the color of the skies, animal and insect behavior, and so on. The inclusion of the barometer in this text is a signal of how much weather prediction will change with the rise of modern science and technology.
It is a matter of great convenience, to be able to tell, beforehand, what the weather is to be. Some persons rely upon the Almanac, but let me tell you that anybody can guess at the weather, as well as an Almanac-maker. There are certain signs, however, which foretell changes of weather, many of which have been noticed for thousands of years. Swift says, that
Careful observers may foretell the hour,
By sure prognostics, when to dread a shower, &c.
Thus persons who follow the sea, learn to predict, with great certainty, what the weather will be for some time to come. Farmers, and other people also, who live in the country, where the business depends much upon the weather, get to understand the signs which foretell a change with tolerable accuracy.
Dr. Darwin has collected many of these signs in the following verses.
The hollow winds begin to blow;
The clouds look black, the glass is low;
The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep;
And spiders from their cobwebs peep.
Last night the sun went pale to bed;
The moon in halos hid her head.
The boding shepherd heaves a sigh,
For, see, a rainbow spans the sky.
The walls are damp, the ditches smell,
Closed is the light-red pimpernel.
Hark! how the chairs and tables crack,
Old Betty’s joints are on the rack;
Her corns with shooting pains torment her,
And to her bed untimely send her.
Loud quack the ducks, the sea-fowls cry,
The distant hills are looking nigh.
How restless, are the snorting swine!
The busy flies disturb the kine.
Low o’er the grass the swallow wings,
The cricket, too, how sharp he sings!
[Puss] on the hearth, with velvet paws,
Sits wiping o’er her whiskered jaws.
The smoke from chimney’s right ascends,
Then spreading, back to earth it bends.
The wind unsteady veers around,
Or settling in the south is found.
Through the clear stream the fishes rise,
And nimbly catch the incautious flies.
The glow-worms, numerous, clear, and bright,
Illumed the dewy hill last night
At dusk the squalid toad was seen,
Like quadruped, stalk o’er the green.
The whirling wind the dust obeys,
Aud in the rapid eddy plays.
The frog has changed his yellow vest,
And in a russet coat is drest.
The sky is green, the air is still,
The mellow blackbird’s voice is shrill.
The dog, so altered is his taste,
Quits mutton bones, on grass to feast.
Behold the rooks, how odd their flight!
They imitate the gliding kite,
And seem precipitate to fall,
As if they felt the piercing ball.
The tender colts on back do lie,
Nor heed the traveller passing by.
In fiery red the sun doth rise,
Then wades through clouds to mount the skies.
’Twill surely rain, we see ’t with sorrow,
No working in the fields to-morrow.
In order to enable the reader to study the subject of signs of the weather, I will arrange those most relied upon, in alphabetical order, for convenient reference; remarking by the way, that “all signs of rain are said to fail in dry weather.” By this you must understand that the signs here set down are only probable, not infallible, signs.
Aches and Pains in the body, of various kinds, frequently forebode rain. Persons, for example, subject to rheumatism, feel more pain in the affected limb or part of the body before a change of weather, particularly when fair is to be exchanged for wet. Old, carious teeth are also troublesome, and pains in the face, ears gums are sometimes experienced. Limbs once broken also ache at the place of their union, and various other aches and pains have been from time immemorial found to be signs of changes of weather.
Animals, by some peculiar sensibility electrical or other atmospheric influence, often indicate changes of weather.
Ants.—An universal bustle and activity observed in ant hills may be generally regarded as a sign of rain. The ants frequently appear all in motion together and carry their eggs about from place to place.
Asses.—When asses bray more than ordinary, particularly if they shake their ears if uneasy, it is said they predict rain, and particularly showers. We have noticed, that, in showery weather, a donkey, confined in a yard near the house, has brayed before every shower, and generally some minutes before the rain has fallen, as if some electrical influence, produced by the concentrating power of the approaching rain-cloud, caused a tickling in the windpipe of the animal, just before the shower came up. Whatever this electric state of the air preceding a shower may be, it seems to be the same that causes in other animals some peculiar sensations,—which makes the peacock squall the pintado call “come-back,” and which creates a variety of prognosticative motions in the different species of the animal kingdom.
An expressive English adage says,
When the ass begins to bray,
Be sure we shall have rain that day.
We have, says the writer of the preceding, repeatedly been able to give our hay-makers useful admonitions founded solely on the braying of the ass. Thus the proverb says truly,
’T is time to cock your hay and corn
When the old donkey blows his horn.
Barometer.—There is no instrument now more generally used for ascertaining the coming weather than the barometer. It may however be remarked, that it is more from its rising or falling, than from its height or lowness, that we are to infer fair or foul weather. Generally speaking, the rising of the mercury presages clear fair weather, and its falling, foul weather, as rain, snow, high winds, and storms.
In very hot weather, the falling of the mercury indicates thunder.
In winter, the rising indicates frost, and in frosty weather, if the mercury fall three or four divisions, there will follow a thaw; but in a continued frost, if the mercury rise, it will snow.
When foul weather happens soon after the falling of the mercury, expect but little of it; and, on the contrary, expect but little fair weather when it proves fair shortly after the mercury has risen.
In foul weather, when the mercury rises much and high, and so continues for two or three days before the foul weather is quite over, then expect a continuance of fair weather to follow.
In fair weather, when the mercury falls much and low, and thus continues for two or three days before the rain comes, then expect a great deal of wet, and probably high winds.
The unsettled motions of the mercury denotes uncertain and changeable weather.
The words engraved on the register plate of the barometer, it may be observed, cannot be strictly relied upon to correspond exactly with the state of the weather; though it will in general agree with them as to the mercury rising and falling.
When the thermometer and barometer rise together in summer, with rain in large drops, a wholesome state of the atmosphere is at hand.
A great and sudden rising of the barometer, that is to say, a great accession of atmospherical pressure, will, in some persons, occasion a slight temporary difficulty of hearing and tingling in the ears, similar to that which is experienced in descending from high mountains, or from the air in balloons.
Source: “Prognostications of the Weather” Robert Merry’s Museum (November), 1844, pp. 154–159.