Isaac and the Weather

An almanac Isaac used

As a Kansas homesteader learning to farm in the sandy loam soil of the prairie with weather different from the Pennsylvania farms and weather of his youth, Isaac Werner depended on both almanacs and folklore to help predict the seasonal weather patterns.  In locating books that Isaac owned in his personal library, I was eager to include the specific almanacs Isaac owned and used frequently.  You can only imagine how excited I was to find a 1892 McLean's Almanac with the Storm Calendar and Weather Forecasts of Rev. Irl Hicks--an example of the very publication Isaac was almost certain to have owned!  I could hardly wait for it to arrive so I could read the forecasts Isaac would have relied upon, and when it came, it was in perfect condition, its cover pictured at right.

The joke was on me, however, for although that cover is in English, if you look carefully at the lower right-hand corner, you will see the word "GERMAN."  All of the pages inside the almanac are published in German!  Isaac was raised in the Pennsylvania Dutch country, and in the early pages of his journal, written in 1870-1871, he occasionally writes short passages in German, so it might be possible that Isaac owned a German language almanac.  However, I'm sure that the almanacs he picked up in St. John to pass around at the Farmers' Alliance meeting would have been in English.

Not everyone trusted the storm predictions of Rev. Hicks, but the almanacs also illustrated phases of the moon, predicted eclipses, and other information, and Isaac continued to rely on the weather predictions in his almanacs as one source to consider.

In April of 1889, he recorded in his journal that nine of his roosters had begun crowing the previous evening, which he interpreted as a sign of changing weather.  This is consistent with the folklore that "When a rooster crows at night there will be rain by morning."  Isaac also saw a good season for hatching toads as a prediction of a change in the weather, and he wrote in his journal about a trip to St. John with his early harvested potatoes loaded in his wagon, during which there were so many toads hopping in the wagon tracks ahead of his horses that he could not avoid crushing some of them.  He was perplexed as to why they chose the road for their exercise, but he did feel that the abundant crop of toads predicted a weather change.

However, during a droughty period he wrote that the usually dependable signs of rain, like frogs croaking in the evenings and gnats and mosquitoes being particularly bad, had not brought the rainfall that was needed.  Perhaps this quote from Alice Hoffman would have been better suited to Isaac on both accounts:  "When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure."

If you missed the blog about folklore weather predictions posted 4-3-2014, you may want to read it now. 

Folklore Forecasts of the Weather

Red sky at morning,  sailor take warning...

In an era when there was no NOWA to alert us to the approach of severe weather, no constant weather channel to share weather conditions across the nation, and no television weatherman (or woman) to artfully point to temperatures and predictions on a local weather map, people relied on almanacs and folklore to predict the weather.  Isaac Werner's journal contains his observations and predictions about the weather, and every daily entry included the temperature, moisture, and wind conditions.  

My father often mentioned weather sayings, paying particular attention to the evening sky to predict the coming weather.  I believe observing a ring around the moon as a prediction of bad weather was one of his comments.  There is some scientific basis for that bit of folklore, since the ring is caused by a refraction of reflected sunlight from the moon onto ice crystals in the upper atmosphere.  Thin cirrus clouds normally precede a warm front by 1 or 2 days, and a warm front is often associated with a storm.  Some people believe the number of stars inside the ring indicate the number of days until the bad weather.

Nearly all of us know the saying, "If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb."  Given the recent severe cold across the nation, surely most of us are hoping for the appearance of a lamb that doesn't disappear during the following days!  Another familiar quote to many of us is "Red sky at Morning, sailor take warning; red sky at night, a sailor's delight."  One prediction utilized by my father was "Rain before seven, fine before eleven," although I don't think he used the rhyme.  If you would enjoy reading more examples of weather folklore, you may want to visit http://www.granny-miller.com/50-old-time-weather-proverbs-signs/.  

...Red sky at night, a sailor's delight!

Having been raised in a farming community, I could certainly identify with what Kim Hubbard had to say:  "Don't knock the weather.  If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation."  Farm families depend on suitable weather for their growing crops, and although merchants and service providers in agricultural communities should also realize the significance of weather conditions to their customers and clients, apparently not everyone does.  I was shocked by a woman dashing into Wal-Mart one day, complaining loudly to everyone within earshot about the rain spoiling her hair.  Those of us with crops desperate for rain after a lengthy dry spell weren't too sympathetic about her spoiled hair-do!  As Benjamin Franklin observed, "Some are weatherwise, some are otherwise."

A later blog will share Isaac Werner's methods for predicting the weather!