While I am but firmly convinced that weather has been a prime topic of thought and conversation since time began, I do know for a fact that gardeners always talk about the weather.
Endless speculation, analysis and predictions! Gardeners are attuned to weather and experience it along with their gardens day in and day out. For gardeners, Weather always begins with a Capital W! Whether the weather has been good or bad doesn't seem to matter. Gardeners are rarely happy about the weather. Either it's too awful for words, or it's so beautiful it can never last. Of course, it's too soon to start predicting for the next season to come... or is it? It's never too early to start -- the Old Farmer's Almanac has been predicting weather for over two hundred years!
In the 1992 book, "The Best of The Old Farmer's Almanac: the First 200 Years", there are not one but four sections of "sure-fire(?) methods for predicting the weather". Some use plants as indicators, such as the admonition to "watch for rain if any of the following open later or close earlier than usual: daylily (opens at 7 A.M., closes at 8 P.M.); dandelion (opens at 7 A.M., closes at 8 P.M.); lettuce (opens at 8 A.M., closes at 9 P.M.). I wonder what day light savings time does to these, but that's another topic altogether!
Another Almanac method describes the famous and widely popular "Ol' Goose Bone Method" from the turn of the last century. A third provides observations from the world of animals and birds as in "Frogs croaking more than usual, moles throwing up more soil than usual, toads in great numbers, and oxen licking their forefeet all mean rain."
But the fourth Almanac method is a little different. "A Table Foretelling the Weather Through All The Lunations of Each Year -- Forever" was created in 1834 and is still taken into consideration to some degree for the Almanac's predictions. (The author was careful to note they rely far more on their projections of solar activity.) Whatever the case may be, today The Old Farmer's Almanac does present Heavenly Details!
And yes, the Almanac is still in the business of making predictions! Here is their current take on The Weather Ahead!
Here are a few more helpful weather and related sites:
If you are not up-to-date on your lunations and solar activity, here's a nifty virtual tour of
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