Winter Forecasting

With the end of daylight savings time this weekend and earlier darkness, it’ll seem more like winter even though it’s going to be in the sixties next week and official winter doesn’t begin for another six weeks. I thought, in preparation for this, you might like to have a few winter severity tips.

To gauge the severity of an upcoming winter you must obtain a recently deceased local goose. Extract and study its breastbone. The more mottled it is, the worse the winter will be. If that’s not doable, check your local trees. The more moss there is on the south side of the trunk, the harder the winter will be.

Pay close attention to squirrels. The deeper they bury their nuts, the colder it’s going to be. And fruit trees blooming twice in one year is a sure sign that the upcoming winter will be a bad one. I wonder if that carries over to strawberries. I picked a mess of them last month so if it does, we’re in for it.

For short term weather forecasting, watch your cat. If it sits with its back to the heat source then the weather will turn cold. Um, still haven’t turned the heat on so I can’t do test this one. Also, if your cat is extra frisky, a storm is coming. Yeah, that one I can agree with. Beau and Kya were insane last Friday and Saturday before the snow. If you don’t have cats, you can use the moon instead. If there’s a ring around the moon, count the number of stars inside it and that’s how many days it’ll be until the next precipitation. If the moon has two rings there will be snow within 24 hours.

For long term forecasting January is the most important month so keep this in mind. The first twelve days are said to predict the weather for the next twelve months. For a precipitation forecast cut the tops off of twelve onions. Scoop a little spot in each center and fill it with salt. Line them up in an east-west orientation between 11:00 PM and midnight on New Year’s Eve. Check them in the morning. The more water in each onion, the wetter the assigned month will be.

Unfortunately we’ve missed out on one of the snowfall prediction methods but you can try it next year. Count the number of foggy mornings in August to determine the number of snowfalls.

The next two are really contradictory if I use our first snow. You can either count the number of days between the first snow and Christmas or the number of days it snowed after the last New Moon. It snowed on the 29th. So we’re either having 58 snows or 3, depending on which method you believe. Yeah, I’m not so sure about that choice.

Happy Weekend!