If this is the case, it’s possible that rain has already passed, and you’re in the clear.Ī red western sky at night can mean a couple things, depending on the shade of red. A red night sky in the east likely means that the light of the setting sun is passing through the low atmosphere and reflecting off clouds. This is because the proverb isn’t actually specific enough for us to accurately predict the weather.Ī red sky at night can indeed mean fair weather, but particularly if the red appears in the eastern sky. While this weather proverb (and its many variants) is probably the most well known in our culture, its truth is a little more complicated than is typically understood. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight red sky in morning, sailor’s warning.” When they sense dry air (a sign of good weather), they’ll come out and spin their webs freely, knowing they have a few days of happy hunting. For humans, this is a sign that rain/poor weather is on its way. Spiders are aware of this, so when they sense high humidity, they are most apt to stay in their hiding places. When humidity is high, their webs can absorb that water, making them heavy to the point of sometimes even breaking. Spider webs are incredibly sensitive to moisture in the air. “If spiders are many and spinning their webs, the spell will soon be very dry.” The same effect can be noted with lovely-smelling flowers (“Flowers smell best just before a rain”) and also offending manure fields and ponds (“Manure smells stronger before a rain” and “When ditches and ponds offend the nose, Look for rains and stormy blows”).ģ. So if your tobacco pipe has a stronger smell than usual, you might predict that poor weather is on its way. When the air is moist like this, humidity is increasing, making rain more likely. This allows those smell molecules to better attach themselves to the moist surfaces of your nose, which makes their particular scent stronger. ![]() In moist, humid air, water molecules attach to the aromatic molecules, and the scent becomes hydrated. In dry air, aromatic or “smell” molecules (those that carry scent to our noses) are “naked” - they are floating around in the air on their own. To understand this proverb, we need to go to the molecular level. “When pipes smell stronger, it’s going to rain.” So, if geese are flying their V formations high up, get that picnic ready. When air pressure is high, that optimum level is high in the sky, and the reverse is true for low pressure. This is because geese are incredibly adept at flying with optimum air density. ![]() If it’s flying lower in the sky, barometric pressure is low, and poor weather is foretold. If the goose “honks high” - or is flying at high altitude, it’s an indication of high barometric pressure, and therefore good weather. This proverb has nothing to do with the pitch of a goose’s honk, but rather the altitude of its flight. Note: I highly recommend first reading our article on air pressure and barometers many of these proverbs are related to atmospheric pressure and how it relates to incoming and outgoing weather systems. Rather than relying on your local meteorologist or your smartphone app to tell you what to wear for the day, why not work on your powers of observation and come to understand more about the weather and the natural world around you? Perhaps surprisingly, most of this handed-down “folk wisdom” is really quite accurate, and has a lot of science behind it weather proverbs of old can be applied today just as well as they were centuries ago. They realized that animal behavior, wind direction, air pressure (which could be measured with a barometer), etc., were pretty accurate indicators of how the weather would behave. To help with this task of predicting the weather, farmers, sailors, and amateur meteorologists of all kinds came up with handy, often rhyming proverbs that could guide their observations. Today, we have meteorologists and entire government agencies dedicated to predicting the weather with high-tech computers and algorithms, but a hundred and two-hundred years ago (and more!), folks had to rely mostly on observation and rudimentary tools to predict the weather of the coming days. And on and on the list goes of how our lives are influenced by the winds and skies. What we wear, when we leave for our morning commute, the chores we do, the hobbies we partake in, the family activities we plan. When you really think about it, the weather impacts our decisions every single day.
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