Emerson's Weather Report

Emy on window sill checking the weather

 Sometimes I am not sure whether we train our pets or they train us.  I grew up on a farm with lots of animals--always cattle in the unplowed prairie pasture, hogs one year, a lamb one year that a neighbor gave us when it needed to be bottle fed and he did not want to take the time, chickens, and a mean banty rooster we got from somewhere one year.

We were given a water spaniel named Brownie when I was about three years old, but she was a distraction to every male dog in the neighborhood, and her litters were always large.  When we had given puppies away to everyone we knew, she was finally given away too, but we kept two male pups from her last litter--my dog Curlie and my brother's dog Jack.  Curlie was my buddy from the time I was three until my senior year in high school. 

There were always cats.  The one most special was Mrs. Silk.  There were a few other cats, but they were barn cats, and they never lasted very long.  I wonder now if they might have met a sad ending when they were out hunting.  My parents did not allow pets in the house, and I am not sure if they were regularly fed other than table scraps and milk until our last milk cow, Old Red, went to the sale.

I knew nothing about house pets until I married and my husband brought home a beautiful kitten from the college farm where he worked that first year of college.  Since then, we have almost always had a pet or two, and they lived in the house.

But this blog is about the weather.  Our dogs were never "trained" but we talked to them as if they understood, and fairly quickly they acquired vocabularies.  Our cats pretend to ignore human language and prefer to train us...which brings me to Emerson's weather report.  

I enjoy sitting outside, just taking a break to listen to the birds and the 'petty coat' rustling of the leaves on the cottonwood trees.  I didn't have a particular time nor did I always make time to go outside, but whenever I went outside, our cat Emerson would hurry to the door to join me.  However, the miserable heat this summer has meant that if I fail to go outside early, it will be too hot to be enjoyable by 9 or 10 o'clock.

Emerson has taken the responsibility of leading me to the door every morning, to make sure we do not miss getting outside when it is cool, and before a wind that could knock you over picks up, as the winds have been so many days this summer.  We watch the birds dash through the air catching bugs, and listen to all of the sounds of a country morning, and we make our prediction of just how hot it will get.  This summer, Emerson's weather prediction is almost always hot and windy, and most days he has been right!      

Drought on the Prairie

"July was proving to be unusually hot, and rain was sorely needed.  The leaves on Isaac's potato plants were drying, even the ones in his garden patch that he watered daily.  The corn was suffering too,  drying before  ears had formed or silk was out, and leaves turning white.  The ground was too dry and hard most places to stir the wheat stubble, such droughty conditions being exactly what Professor Hicks had predicted.  According to the current almanac, the drought was to set in after June and continue into the 1891 and 1892 seasons.  Isaac could only hope that this time Professor Hicks was wrong."

The above quote is from Chapter 8, 1890, of my manuscript.  Did you think I might be quoting from this week's newspaper?  The passage certainly sounds familiar to many farmers in Isaac's old Kansas community.

In Isaac's time, he turned to almanacs for long range weather predictions.  The almanac pictured at right was published in 1892 by Dr. J. A. McLean to promote his patent medicines, but the "Storm Calendar and Weather Forecasts" were prepared by Rev. Irl R. Hicks, the "Storm Prophet," whose weather predictions Isaac came to respect.

Today's farmers have more sophisticated forecasting methods available to them.  The United States Seasonal Drought Outlook map shown below was issued by the National Weather Service.

 According to the news report accompanying the map, the current drought is the most widespread since 1956, with 56% of pastures and rangelands in poor to very poor conditions and stream flows at or near record low values across much of the Midwest and parts of the Central Plains, West, Southeast, and even parts of New England.  Sixty-four percent of the contiguous U.S. is in some degree of drought, with another 17% abnormally dry.

Working on my manuscript this week, tweaking and deleting to tighten the text in preparation for submitting to publishers, I read the paragraph quoted above.  Like so many issues from the 1880s and 1890s that relate to what we face today, today's farmers can obviously identify with the challenges faced by Isaac during the drought a century and a quarter ago.  Careful weather records like those kept in Isaac's journal are part of our present consideration of whether such climatic events are only cyclical weather patterns or whether today's weather is becoming more extreme and erratic.  Farming since Isaac's time has obviously become more sophisticated, but like Isaac, today's farmers remain subject to the challenges of unfavorable weather.