Do these six nuggets of weather folklore actually hold water?
Folks had to rely on some creative methods of tracking the weather in the days before satellite and radar. How do these six bits of wisdom hold up to scrutiny?
We’re lucky to live in an era of accurate weather forecasts and real-time views of our planet from space.
Big storms and changeable conditions often came as a complete surprise to people for most of human history. Folks had to resort to some creative methods of predicting and tracking the weather back in the day.
That’s where folklore comes into the picture. But how well do these old sayings and factoids hold up to scrutiny?
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Can a ‘red sky’ predict the weather?
“Red sky by night, sailor’s delight; red sky by morning, sailors take warning.” It’s one of the first bits of weather folklore we learned as kids. The saying refers to the colours of the sunrise or sunset shining on clouds looming on the horizon. This nugget of wisdom actually has some truth behind it.
Most weather systems in the northern hemisphere move west to east. A storm departing to the east would allow the colourful sunset to shine its reds and oranges on clouds as they scurry out of the region. An approaching storm in the morning, however, might catch the fiery reds of a vivid sunrise—portending a choppy day ahead.
While this kind of knowledge could prove helpful to mariners in the days before satellite and radar imagery, it doesn’t always hold true. Sunsets and sunrises frequently cast vivid colours on clouds no matter where they are in the sky so long as the Sun appears near the horizon.
Can crickets tell the temperature?
One of the fun experiments kids can enjoy over summer vacation is to count the number of chirps a cricket makes to determine the temperature at that given moment. It’s no myth—you really can use a cricket as a makeshift thermometer.
A scientist by the name of Amos Dolbear authored a paper in 1897 to prove that you can do some buggy math to figure out the current conditions.
Dolbear’s Law holds that you count the number of cricket chirps you hear in 15 seconds and then add 40 to get the current temperature in Fahrenheit (he was an American, after all). If you want to run the experiment in Celsius, counting the number of chirps in 8 seconds and then adding 5 should get you a good estimate.
Can inside out leaves herald a thunderstorm?
Worried about an afternoon thunderstorm on a hot day? "Just look at the leaves," my mom used to tell me. Leaves turning inside out on deciduous trees could mean a storm later that day.
Like many timeworn tidbits of weather folklore, there’s a kernel of truth at play here. Warm and humid days can cause healthy green leaves to turn inside out, exposing their lighter underbellies when the breeze blows.
It doesn’t always work out, but the conditions that cause leaves to turn inside out—warmth, humidity, and wind—can all contribute to thunderstorms bubbling up on a summer’s day.
Does a halo mean rain is on the way?
It’s wonderful gazing up at the sky to see a giant halo staring back at you. Haloes form when light bends at a specific angle as it passes through ice crystals high in the atmosphere to create a bright circle of light around the Sun or the Moon.
Does spotting a halo mean that it’s going to rain in the next day or so? This idea is another one of those observations from the days before modern technology.
High-level clouds are sometimes the first sign of an approaching weather system—and it’s these thin, icy clouds that are needed to form haloes. While it’s not always true, these optical illusions can signal changeable weather in the near future.
Can grandma’s achy back really ‘predict’ rain?
The human body is a natural wonder that’s really prone to breaking down in inconvenient ways. One of those pesky malfunctions tends to be joints that ache from both age and injury. But can you really ‘feel’ an approaching storm deep inside?
Fluid and tender flesh around our joints can prove susceptible to changing weather conditions. Lower air pressure—like you’d see as a storm system approaches—can cause those sensitive areas to swell, causing aches and pains to develop in the leadup to a storm.
Does the rain in Spain fall mainly on the plain?
What about a silly saying that stuck? Characters in the musical My Fair Lady belted out this classic line in an attempt to break Eliza Doolittle’s strong accent and turn her into—you guessed it—a fair lady. But does the rain in Spain really fall mainly on the plain, or is it just a convenient rhyme?
Spain is a mountainous country on the Iberian Peninsula. Only a few pockets of the country are flat enough to qualify as the plains—including portions of Andalusia in the south, as well as the Ebro River valley in the northeast, which includes the city of Zaragoza.
The majority of Spain’s rains fall over the north coast bordering the Bay of Biscay. Communities like A Coruña and Bilbao notch more than 1,000 mm of rain in a typical year—more than double what they typically see down in Seville and Madrid. The famous line is just a fun rhyme in the end.