lystn

Old fashioned weather prediction tips have always interested me. As a little kid, I realized I could predict a soon-to-come severe thunderstorm by watching for a certain flip of the leaves on our oak trees. Now I'm all grown up and live on a farm. I'm too far out to hear tornado sirens. And as a rule, I don't watch the news. While I can access the radar on my smartphone (and sometimes get weather alerts), I've found they aren't always accurate—even when they are GPS based. So how in the world do I deal with the weather and know what's coming? (Don't want to read all the words? This blog post is also a podcast—just press the triangle play button on the little black bar at the top of this post!) It is important to know that severe weather is coming, and yet I've found a trend in the last several years that feels like mainstream, technology based weather prediction leans heavily towards hype in what I can only assume is some over-effort to keep people informed and "protected". Unfortunately, not only does that not help anything, it can actually backfire. If people feel the weather forecast is wrong most of the time, will they listen when it's actually right? What ever happened to looking at the sky? Paying attention to the way the air feels outside? Noticing how your animals are acting? Seeing the signs that nature gives us? I guess it's hard to do that when a lot of people don't spend a lot of time outside anymore. Today let's talk about weather folklore and old fashioned weather prediction tips. Stick a few of these in your back pocket, and you'll have a decent idea of what the sky is going to do next. Old fashioned weather prediction tips I grew up hearing... Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors delight: This weather saying has old roots and also scientific basis. It holds true if you live in certain areas on the planet and your weather patterns move west to east (not more north to south, as sometimes happens.) Because of this weather movement and the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, if you see a red sky in the morning (the east), the rising sun is illuminating an approaching weather system (coming from the west). If instead you see a red sky at night (the west), the setting sun is illuminating the departing weather system, and decent weather is generally to follow. Sun dogs mean a change in weather: Sundogs are formed by ice crystals in the atmosphere and appear as patches of light next to the sun. I grew up hearing that sundogs meant a change in weather was coming. Other people use sundogs as an accurate predictor of rain. But as I've gotten older, I've come to know sundogs often mean what some old timers claim they mean: today will be clear as a bell and cold as hell. If a dog is eating grass, that means it will rain: While it sometimes seemed to work out to be a predictor of coming rain, many people say there is no scientific basis for it. Others say that dogs can sense the atmospheric pressure change before a storm, which gives them a bellyache and causes them to eat grass. When morning dew is on the grass, rain will never come to pass: I've mostly found this to be true here in Minnesota, and as it turns out, there's a scientific basis for it. If the night is clear (no clouds), the ground cools sufficiently to allow due to form. And if there are no clouds...good weather is ahead, right? Leaves will flip before heavy rain or a storm: Although some people thought I was nuts when I was little, the leaves on some trees do seem to flip or turn over before a storm. Leaves can become limp in response to abrupt changes in humidity that generally come with a storm, and this allows the slightest breeze to flip them over. This is also the reason I bought my very first FoxFire book: pre-internet, it was the only place I'd ever seen leaves flipping over before heavy rain mentioned, and I finally felt validated.