Weather Folklore - Special Weather-forecasting Days

Special Weather-forecasting Days

In the British Isles, Saint Swithun's day (July 15) is said to forecast the weather for the rest of the summer. If St Swithun's day is dry, then the legend says that the next forty days will also be dry. If however it rains, the rain will continue for forty days. In France, Saint Medard (June 8), Urban of Langres, and Saint Gervase and Saint Protais (June 19) are credited with an influence on the weather almost identical with that attributed to St Swithun in England, while in Flanders there is St Godelieve (July 6) and in Germany the Seven Sleepers' day (June 27).

There is a scientific basis to the legend of St Swithun's day. Around the middle of July, the jet stream settles into a pattern which, in the majority of years, holds reasonably steady until the end of August. When the jet stream lies north of the British Isles then continental high pressure is able to move in; when it lies across or south of the British Isles, Arctic air and Atlantic weather systems predominate.

In Russia, the weather on the feast of the Protecting Veil is popularly believed to indicate the severity of the forthcoming winter.

There was an old proverb from Romagna that ran: "Par San Paternian e' trema la coda a e' can." ("On St. Paternian's day, the dog's tail wags"). This Cervian proverb refers to the fact that the cold began to be felt around the saint's feast day. A farmers' saying associated with Quirinus' feast day of March 30 was "Wie der Quirin, so der Sommer" ("As St. Quirinus' Day goes, so will the summer").

Ice Saints is the name given to St. Mamertus, St. Pancras, and St. Servatus in German, Austrian, and Swiss folklore, so named because their feast days fall on the days of May 11, May 12, and May 13, respectively, a period noted to bring a brief spell of colder weather in the Northern Hemisphere under the Julian Calendar.

Read more about this topic:  Weather Folklore

Famous quotes containing the words special and/or days:

    We agree fully that the mother and unborn child demand special consideration. But so does the soldier and the man maimed in industry. Industrial conditions that are suitable for a stalwart, young, unmarried woman are certainly not equally suitable to the pregnant woman or the mother of young children. Yet “welfare” laws apply to all women alike. Such blanket legislation is as absurd as fixing industrial conditions for men on a basis of their all being wounded soldiers would be.
    National Woman’s Party, quoted in Everyone Was Brave. As, ch. 8, by William L. O’Neill (1969)

    Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)