Senior Connections Senior Connections May 2019 | Page 2
An old-time weather rhyme
BRIAN M. HAINES
McLeod County Historical Society executive director
soon.” The ring around the moon means that high, sound of highline wires buzzing, but did you know
thin clouds were moving into the atmosphere. As that it’s not the highline making that sound?
the clouds began to drop and thicken, the crystals
inside them would cast a halo around the moon, The high-pitched, electric-sounding buzz during the
meaning that moisture is building in the atmosphere height of summer is actually caused by an insect
called the cicada. The cicada sits high in the trees
and making the clouds heavy with rain.
A storm was also predicted by how smoke and vibrates its tymbals (organs on their abdomens).
acted as it left a chimney. The saying went that if The vibration of the tymbals is amplified and can
chimney smoke descends, the nice weather ends. be heard for long distances.
This is the buzzing sound you hear during the
The science behind chimney smoke and weather
is debatable, as there are many factors other than dog days of summer. The old saying is that when
an approaching storm that can make chimney the cicadas start “singing,” you can expect the first
smoke descend; however that may be, the pioneers hard frost six weeks from then.
The old weather rhymes are not always correct.
believed that smoke from a fire descending rather
than rising meant that a storm would soon be in There have been many times when my campfire
smoke falls and the weather stays sunny, or when
the vicinity.
One thing that has always been on the mind of the fish still bite in a strong east wind (“when
farmers, and still is to this day, is the first frost. the wind’s from the east, the fish bite the least”);
Even in today’s modern weather forecasting, it can however that may be, it’s always fun to see people
be difficult to tell when the first frost is coming. A react when you correctly forecast the weather with
century ago, people claimed they would know when an old-time weather rhyme.
the first frost would be, six weeks in advance.
There are many things
that describe the dog days
of summer: dry grass,
oppressive heat, and your
retriever lying lazily on
the lawn with his/her
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tongue hanging out.
One thing that almost
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everyone relates those
lazy dog days to is the
There’s an old phrase I once heard about
weather, “Everyone complains about the weather,
but nobody ever does anything about it.”
Now, I know complaining about the weather is
folly, yet, I find myself doing it a lot lately. One
thing we can take comfort in, however, is that the
light at the end of the tunnel is finally in view.
Being a historian, I’m always trying to equate
our modern times with those of the past, especially
when it comes to dealing with the obstacles we
share with our counterparts of the past – obstacles
like the weather.
Today, we have modern technology that tells us
whether or not to bring an umbrella, yet those who
came before us had a number of interesting ways
to tell what Mother Nature had in store for them.
They couldn’t simply turn on the news or pick
up a paper to see what the weather would bring;
instead, people had to be tuned in to the world
around them to forecast the elements.
For something a little different, I decided to do
some research and find out just how our not-so-
distant ancestors forecast the weather.
A storm on the frontier could be disastrous
for settlers – prairie fires, mudslides, or massive
snowstorms could be a matter of life or death.
Since the settlers couldn’t just tune into the
evening news, they forecast a coming storm by
looking to the horizon at night and in the morning.
One of the most time-tested and accurate ways to
determine if a storm is
coming is the old phrase,
“Red in the morning
is a sailor’s warning,
red at night is a sailor’s
delight.”
Predicting the weather
with this phrase is as
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simple as it sounds.
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Since weather generally
moves west to east, a
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storm system moving in
from the west will cast
a reddish glow to the
sky while the sun rises
in the morning; on the
contrary, a storm system
that has passed through
an area will cast a
reddish glow when the
sun is setting at night.
Another way that the
old-timers
predicted
a storm was by the
moon. The rhyme went
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something like this, “A
ring around the moon �������������������������������������������
means rain will be here
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Located in the friendly
river city of Watertown
2
Senior
Connections May 2019
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