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Rambiling & Ruminating
Guess what I'm going to write about this time? The past two summers have been unusually hot and dry, especially this year. The earth has warmed by less than one degree in the last 100 years, but if you buy into the latest nonsense being preached by "Professor" Gore, you would have to assume that the world is doomed. I may be swimming upstream, but I don't believe a word of it. The fact is the earth has gone through periods of heating and cooling since day one. It is a natural phenomena, but the same nutty professors that 25 years ago were saying that we were about to enter another ice age are now saying that global warming is upon us. Well of course it is! So what? Now that I've got that off my chest, let's look at some other aspects pertaining to the weather. People have been forecasting the weather for centuries. Until fairly recently people relied upon their environment to give them clues as to what the weather would do. Generally, these signs came from the plants and animals around us. For example, before it rained, some people observed that ants moved to higher ground, cows lay down, pinecones opened up, frogs croaked more frequently, and sheeps' wool uncurled. Many of the signs that people cite as predictors of the weather are myths that have no basis in fact, but there are many that do have some truth to them. Most animals are vulnerable to environmental changes that humans can't detect. Swallows flying low may indicate the air pressure is dropping. Falling pressure may affect the digestive system of cows, making them less willing to go to pasture, causing them to lie down. Static electricity may increase the grooming activities of cats. The calls of some birds, including crows and geese, have been known to be more frequent with falling pressure. Some flowers close up as the humidity rises so rain doesn't wash away their pollen. The leaves of some trees curl just before a storm. The higher the humidity, the better sound travels. Some English people gauged the chances of rain by the clarity with which the church bells sound. A drop in barometric pressure often affects people with joint diseases, bad teeth, recently healed broken bones, or corns or bunions, bringing pain or pressure to those areas of the body. Cicadas can't vibrate their wings when the humidity is very high, so may be silent when rain is approaching. Flying insects are more active when the air pressure drops and stay closer to the ground, so they seem to be swarming before a storm. And here is one that you can use if your thermometer is broken: the chirping of a cricket has been shown to provide a close indication of air temperature. By counting the number of cricket chirps in a 14-second period and adding 40, the total will equal the air temperature to within one degree 75 percent of the time. And this is not scientific, but just ask any schoolteacher, and they will most likely confirm that their students tend to become more restless before stormy weather. There are probably as many jokes about the weather as there are myths and facts, especially when it pertains to extreme conditions. Out in west Texas where I lived in the 1950s, we were in the midst of a seven-year drought and I once overheard an old man telling another that he had never actually seen it rain, but that his grandfather had. Most of us rely on the local television news to get our weather forecast, but out here in the country where I live we have frequent power outages, so I rely on my own weather station. It's very simple, but accurate. It consists of a brick suspended from a limb by a string. When it's wet I know it's raining. When it's white, I know that it has been snowing. When it's swaying, I know the wind is blowing and when it's gone, I know we are having a category-5!
One final observation: I know that we are going to have an early winter this year because my dog has started rolling up in his blanket already and he usually doesn't start doing that until November!
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