Red Sky

For today's Friday Folklore, I thought something weather related would be fun, especially after yesterday's post. Perhaps the most famous weather proverb is:

"Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning."

Did you know this dates back to at least the time Christ walked the earth? He made reference to it in Matthew 16:1-3. I found an explanation as to why this proverb is true (for the most part) but it was pretty scientific and meaty, so I'll spare you the details!

Here are some other fun weather related proverbs:

A year of snow, a year of plenty. (I thought this was especially relevant this year)

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

If after a rain you can see enough blue sky to make a pair of man's pants, it will clear.

When grass is dry at morning light, look for rain before the night.

Seagull, Seagull, Sit on the Sand...It's never good weather when you're on the land!

When the ditch and pond offend the nose, look for rain and stormy blows.

When the wind is blowing from the east~tis not fit for man or beast!

And finally, a fun folklore that will bring you a chuckle:

Michigan Winds
retold by S. E. Schlusser

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 folks just take these happenings as a matter of course. Take my friend, Joe, for example. One March, Joe went out on his porch to eat a 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.

'Coarse I've heard they've also got 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 ol' dog off the wall with a shovel. And what did he find, but that the wind had pushed the hounds shadow right into the surface of the wall. So, Jake buried the poor dog under the shadow and wrote his epitaph on it: Doggone.