Tall Tales

"Red Sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning."

This one has been around a long time. In fact, compare it with this Biblical passage from Matthew 16:1-3 : "When evening comes, you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,' and in the morning, 'Today it will be stormy for the sky is red and overcast.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times."

When the western sky is especially clear, there is often a red sunset. That's because as the sun sets, its light shines through much more of the lower atmosphere, which contains dust, salt, smoke and pollution. These particles scatter away some of the shorter wavelengths of light (the violets and blues), leaving only the longer wavelengths (the oranges and reds.) If an area of high air pressure is present, the air sinks. This sinking air holds air contaminants near the earth, making the sunset even redder than usual. This would be the “red sky at night.” In the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere, weather systems most often approach from the west. Since high pressure generally brings fair weather, this type of red sky at sunset would indicate that clear weather is approaching, which would "delight" a sailor. If the sky is red in the eastern morning sky for the same reasons as above, then the high pressure region has most likely already passed from west to the east, and an area of low pressure may follow. Low pressure usually brings clouds, rain or storms, a warning for sailors.

"Mare's tails and mackerel scales make tall ships take in their sails."

A mackerel sky refers to cirrocumulus clouds, which often precede an approaching warm front, which will eventually bring veering winds (changing from northeast and east over to southwest and west) and precipitation.

"Clear moon, frost soon."

If the atmosphere is clear, the surface of the earth will cool rapidly as heat is radiated away at night. There is no "blanket" of clouds to keep the heat that the ground absorbed during the day from radiating back up into space. If the temperature is low enough on these clear nights and there's no wind, frost may form.

"A year of snow, a year of plenty."

A continuous covering of snow on farmland and orchards delays the blossoming of fruit trees until the season of killing frosts is over. It also prevents the alternate thawing and freezing which destroys wheat and other winter grains.

"Halo around the sun or moon, rain or snow soon."

The halo around the sun or moon is a layer of cirrus clouds made of ice crystals. These ice crystals act as tiny prisms, forming a white or sometimes colorful halo around the sun or moon. This cirro-stratus cloud often indicates an approaching warm front and an associated area of low pressure. Rain or snow will not always follow, but there is a higher probability of it after a halo is seen, and the brighter the circle, the greater the probability.

"Rainbow in the morning gives you fair warning."

In the morning, when the sun is in the east, the shower and its rainbow are in the west. As the weather in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere moves mostly from west to east, the morning rainbow indicates that rain is moving from the west toward the observer.

"When the stars begin to huddle, the earth will soon become a puddle."

When clouds increase, whole areas of stars may be hidden by clouds with groups of stars, still in the clear sky, seem to huddle together. The clouds are increasing, so the chance of rain is increasing too.

A few more clues from nature:

Most animals are vulnerable to environmental changes that humans often can't detect. Swallows flying low may indicate the air pressure is dropping. Falling pressure may affect the digestive system of cows, making them less willing to go to pasture, causing them to lie down. Static electricity may increase the grooming activities of cats. The calls of some birds, including crows and geese, have been known to be more frequent with falling pressure. Deer and elk sometimes react to wind and air pressure by coming down from mountains and seeking shelter. Some species from rabbits to rattlesnakes to certain kinds of fish may feed more before a storm so they can seek shelter.

Some flowers close up as the humidity rises so rain doesn't wash away their pollen. The leaves of some trees curl just before a storm.

The higher the humidity, the better sound travels. Some English people gauged the chances of rain by the clarity with which they heard church bells sound.

A drop in barometric pressure often affects people with joint diseases, bad teeth, recently healed broken bones, or corns and bunions, bringing pain or pressure to those areas of the body.

Cicadas can't vibrate their wings when the humidity is very high, so may be silent when rain is approaching. Flying insects are more active when the air pressure drops and stay closer to the ground, so they seem to be swarming before a rain storm.

The chirping of a cricket has been shown to provide a close indication of air temperature. By counting the number of cricket chirps in a 14-second period and adding 40, the total will equal the air temperature to within one degree 75% of the time.

A final note:

Most of these natural forecasting methods are for the short range. Most long-range proverbs have no meteorological basis, including the legend of the ground hog. Read More......

A sure sign that rain's a-coming...
• Thunder in the morning, all day storming/Thunder at night is the travelers delight
• Evening red and morning gray will set the traveler on his way/But evening gray and morning red will bring down rain upon his head
• No dew on the grass at night is a sign of rain
• Clouds on the hill tops, if falling, promise rain; if rising, clear weather.
• A pale rising moon portends rain the next day.
• If after a rain you can see enough blue sky to make a man a pair of pants, it will clear.
• Look for rain when the crow flies low
• When cats wash behind their ears, it means rain
• It is said that flies bite more when it is going to rain
• When chairs squeak, of rain they speak.
• Catchy drawer and sticky door/Coming rain will pour and pour.
• Spiders leave their webs when it is going to rain
• A ring around the sun or moon means rain or snow coming soon.
• When grass is dry at morning light/Look for rain before the night.
• Sea gull, sea gull, sit on the sand/It's never good weather while you're on the land.
• Sound traveling far and wide, a stormy day betide.
• When leaves show their undersides, be very sure that rain betides.
• If ants move their eggs and climb, rain is coming anytime.
• Chimney smoke descends, our nice weather ends.
• When the ditch and pond offend the nose/Then look out for rain and stormy blows.
• When clouds look like black smoke a wise man will put on his cloak.
• Dust rising in dry weather is a sign of approaching change.
• If salt is sticky and gains in weight/ It will rain before too late.
• Red sky at night, sailor's delight/ Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.
• When clouds appear like rocks and towers/Earth's refreshed by frequent showers.
• When the wind is blowing from the east/'Tis not fit for man nor beast.
• Flowers are more fragrant before rain
• The scarlet pimpernel closes in the day time before rain comes.
• The aching of a broken bone predicts rain.
• The more cloud types present, the greater the chance of rain or snow.

Read More......

The Whistling River - so named because twice a day, it reared up to a height of two hundred feet and let loose a whistle that could be heard for over six hundred miles - was the most ornery river in the U.S. of A. It took a fiendish delight in plaguing the life out of the loggers who worked it. It would tie their logs into knots, flip men into the water then toss them back out onto the banks, and break apart whole rafts of logs as soon as the loggers put them together.

This fact by itself might not have been enough by itself to get Paul Bunyan involved. But one day Paul was sitting on a hill by the river combing his beard with a large pine tree when without warning the river reared up and spat four hundred and nineteen gallons of muddy water onto his beard. This startled Paul somewhat, but he figured if he ignored the river, it would go away and leave him alone. But that ornery river jest reared up again and spat five thousand and nineteen gallons of muddy water onto his beard, adding a batch of mud turtles, several large fish and a muskrat into the mix. Paul Bunyan was so mad he jumped up and let out a yell that caused a landslide all the way out in Pike's Peak.
"By jingo, I am gonna tame that river or bust a gut trying!" he cried.
So Paul sat for four days eating popcorn and trying to figure out how to tame that river. He ate so much popcorn that the air was soon filled with white bits and the ground for three miles around was covered with eighteen inches of popcorn scraps. This caused several hundred small animals and a few dozen birds to conclude that they were in a blizzard and so they froze to death. This furnished the loggers at the camp with pot pies for several days.
Just as he ran out of popcorn, Paul decided that the way to tame the river was to pull out the kinks. He would hitch the river to Babe the Blue Ox and let him yank it straight. Of course, Paul knew that an ordinary log chain and the skid hook wouldn't work with water. So he and Babe took a short walk up to the North Pole. There, Paul made a box trap baited with icicles that he set near a blizzard trail. Then he and Babe wandered away. Paul started to throw icebergs out into the ocean so Babe could play fetch. But he had to stop the game since each time Babe jumped into the water a tidal wave threatened to swamp the coast of Florida. After lunch, Paul went back to check the trap. He had caught six young blizzards and an old nor'wester. He put two of the young blizzards in his sack and released the rest. Then he and Babe went back to their camp.
As he walked into camp, Paul yelled to Ole, the Big Swede to build him the largest log chain that's ever been built. Then he staked out the two blizzards, one on each side of the river. Right away, the river began to freeze. By morning, the river had a tough time rearing up to whistle because it was frozen solid for more than seventeen miles. When Paul Bunyan finished his breakfast, he harnessed Babe and wrapped the chain seventy-two times around the foot of the frozen Whistle River. Yelling to the men to stand clear, he shouted at Babe to pull. Babe pulled that chain into a solid bar and sank knee deep into solid rock, but that ornery river refused to budge. So Paul grabbed the chain and he and Babe gave such a yank that the river jerked loose from its banks and they dragged it across the prairie so fast it smoked. After a while, Paul looked back and saw the river was as straight as a gun barrel. But the river was much shorter with the kinks out, and all the extra lengths that used to be in the kinks were running wild out on the prairie. So Paul got his big cross-cut saw and a lot of baling wire and sawed the extra lengths of river into nine-mile pieces, rolled them up and tied them off with the baling wire. He later used them to float his logs when he logged out the desert.
But now that it was straight, the Whistling River lost its gimp and refused to whistle. Which made everyone mad at Paul Bunyan, because now they didn't know when to wake up in the morning. Paul might have been in real trouble if Squeaky Swanson hadn't showed up right about then. Squeaky's speaking voice was no louder than a whisper. But when he yelled, you could hear him clean out in Kansas. So each morning Squeaky got up at the crack of dawn and yelled the blankets off of every bed in camp. Naturally, the men found it hard to sleep in the cold without their blankets, so they got up. Squeaky was a great success, and for the rest of his life he did nothing but get up at dawn and let out one really loud yell.
Read More......

Michigan winds are fiercest in the spring. Why, just last year, the wind knocked one of our mountains over into a valley. Folks woke up the next day to find themselves living on a plain.
But we Michigan folk just take these happenings as a matter of course. Take my friend Joe, for example. One March, Joe went out onto his porch to eat dessert. He had barely taken a bite out of his fresh apple pie when a wind blew his house over. Keeping his presence of mind, Joe grabbed hold of the branch of a tree to keep from being blown away. Once he had secured himself on the branch, he nabbed one of the boards floating away from his house, and used it to shield him from the wind so he could finish eating his apple pie.
'Course, I've heard they also get a pretty mean wind when you cross the border into Canada. There's a story I know about a British Columbia chap named Jake whose dog was blown up against his garage wall one day. That wind blew so hard and so strong that the hound dog starved to death before it quit. Jake had to scrape the poor old dog off the wall with a shovel. And what did he find but that the wind had pushed the hound's shadow right into the surface of the wall. So Jake buried the poor dog under the shadow and wrote his epitaph on it: Doggone. Read More......

To say that the weather in Oklahoma is subject to extremes is an understatement. Instead of rain storms, we get dust storms. On the same day, one man can die of sunstroke at noon while his neighbor freezes to death that night.
Now, as you may well suspect, this finicky weather has an adverse effect upon our frogs. I've known the temperature to drop so fast that our frogs are stuck with their heads above the ice. One bull frog I seen musta been caught in the middle of a leap, because he was sprawled across the ice with the tip of one foot caught inside!
But the temperature is not our only weather phenomenon. No sir. The winds in Oklahoma are noteworthy too. We natives have a crowbar hole drilled through an outside wall. We use it to test the wind. You stick a crowbar through the hole, and if it bends, then the wind is normal. But if the crowbar breaks, well, then best to stay in until the wind dies down some. Read More......

California must be the healthiest state in the union, yes sir! I know of one chap who's grandfather lived to be 200 years old. The old man got awful tired of living after awhile, but couldn't seem to sicken and die.
Finally, his relatives tactfully suggested he try traveling away from California. And sure enough, it worked. The old man took sick not long after leaving and died.
It was part of his last request that they bury him in California; so his heir had his body shipped home. But wouldn't you know it, as soon as he crossed the border into California, the old man revived and rose right out of his coffin, as spry as ever. His heir suggested more travel, but the old man decided to stick it out until his time came. Read More......

You can talk 'til you're blue in the face about the thickest of fogs in ye merry olde England, but I'm tellin' you now, sure as I'm standing here, that England's fogs don't hold nothing over them thick fogs which roll in over the Bay of Fundy here in Maine. These ain't your little pea soupers, you can betcher life. These fogs is so thick you can drive a nail into them and hang yer hat on it. It's the honest truth.
One of my neighbors works a fishing boat, but he can't do nothin' when a Maine fog comes rolling into the bay. He always saves up his chores for a foggy day. One day, the fog came rollin' in overnight, and my friend knew there wasn't to be no fishin' that day. So he decides his roof needs shingling. He got started at the shingling right after breakfast, and didn't come down 'til dinner.
"Maude, we got a mighty long house," he told his wife over supper. "Took me all day to shingle."
Well, Maude knew right enough that they lived in a small house. After all, she'd been cleanin' it for nigh on twenty years, so who would know better? She went outside to take a look. And I'll be jiggered if she didn't discover that my neighbor had shingled right past the edge of the roof and out onto the fog! Read More......