The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

The weird and different ways people have of predicting the weather have always entertained me. First, though, you have to realize that I grew up a couple of growing zones south of here, where it didn’t get as cold, and if it did, it didn’t hang around as long.

It was still winter, understand, but it didn’t have such a tendency to try and kill you three months out of four. Nor, I suppose, did it affect your budget quite so dramatically as does a 20-day period when it never gets above zero, as happens here.

One of the first weather predictors I think I came across up here was how the wooly caterpillar could foretell the coming winter. How thick was his fur? Oooooooo. We’re gonna freeze our butts off this winter. How wide was the black band? (Compared to what, I’d like to know.) Oh, oh. We’re probably not gonna live through January. What direction was he going when he crossed the road? South? Uh, huh. Headed for somewhere warmer. We’re gonna be frozen stiff.

When we first got up here, the Finnish neighbor had a couple of pretty interesting ways of predicting upcoming weather. For example, 90 days after it thundered on ice—meaning probably late February after an unusual rain storm occurred—it would be summer, or he would plant oats, or something. There was another one, too, and it somehow took the first hoar frost, and so many days from that, something would happen. What, exactly, I must confess, I wasn’t able to remember. This weather predicting stuff is hard to keep track of. Every time the weather changes, I think to myself that I must have missed a sign or forgotten how to know it was coming.

There are many other ways. Will the groundhog come out and see his shadow? If he does (why is it always a “he?”), then we’ll have six more weeks of nasty winter.

In the fall, are the ants scattered around? Or are they in straight lines? According to some sources, they scatter in fair weather, line up when foul is coming.

“When grass is dry at morning light, look for rain before the night.” The exact scientific basis for this one isn’t coming to me at the moment, but I’m sure it involves dew point, relative humidity, barometric air pressure, countercyclical air masses, and other stuff.

One of my favorites, because it’s fun to say: “Red sky in morning, sailor take warning; red sky at night, sailor’s delight.” One might assume clouds have some influence on this saying, and clouds come with rain and wind, and therefore it would give that ship’s crew time to wish they were back on dry land.

How heavy a crop of acorns did the oak tree in your backyard bear this fall? What did they look like? When did they begin to drop? Somehow all this gets tied to when the farmer should pick corn, but exactly how, again, I don’t remember.

How heavy and thick and what color was the fur on that deer you just shot? How much fat had the deer stored up? (I think there should be one where the deer winks at you just before you shoot it, as if it were saying “I’m glad I’m getting out of here before this winter comes.”)

One of the oldest methods of predicting how hard the winter will be is the “cooked goose” method. I think this is aptly named, somehow. When the Thanksgiving goose is ready, and everyone has had their fill, the breast bone is removed intact and stored on a shelf somewhere, all the meat carefully removed.

Special attention was paid to what color the breast bone would turn. Blue, black, or purple, a tough, cold winter was on its way. White indicated a mild spring. Purple tips were a predictor of a harsh spring. Blue marching out toward the tips meant not much snow until January. If the bone was a dark color all over, that was another indicator of a tough, nasty winter. In fact, all this could be based on how much oil the bone had absorbed, determining whether or not the goose had stored extra oil for a hard winter.

Myself, how do I predict the weather?

Mostly, I use aches and pains, because in low pressure times—which is an invitation for heavier air to move in and raise heck—the air in your joints expands and causes aches and pains.

How far can you see? Clear air is thin air is light air, meaning low pressure, into which other weather masses will move. Do the birds fly high? They can’t in low pressure.

When all this fails, I turn on the television, and watch the weather.