May 26, 2015 • 27 mins
At one time in human history superstitions were the guiding force in a person's life -- rules of thumb to live by. Find out which pieces of lore and superstition are actually spot-on and why in this episode of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and my name is Julie Douglas. Julie,
what's your favorite non scientific weather forecasting tool one that
(00:26):
we're going to talk about today? The whole like I
feel it in my bones? That one's an interesting because
I do feel it in my bones and particularly my
knee if there's there's some sort of weather change coming
you do. So yesterday when that ominous front was rolling
through Atlanta and we were looking out the windows, were
(00:46):
you were your knees like buckling? No, my my right knee,
which is the one that speaks to me. It was
fine then, But earlier in the week, like the day
before and the day before that, that's when I felt
it and I was thinking, oh, well, maybe the thing
that they always say is true, and that means that
some sort of weather front is coming in. Is that right?
Me an old gaming injury. No, it is a dancing injury,
(01:08):
actually dancing in the field. You know, there's a whole
you know how it goes. I do. My favorite, my
current favorite non scientific weather forecasting tool is it has
to do with the chalk drawings that I do with
my son in the driveway. The more that accumulate, I know,
the more likely it is to rain. So once we
(01:29):
reached the point where we've covered every foreseeable space with
scribbles and elephants, I know that it's got to be
about to rain, because it means like two weeks is past. Okay.
I like that. It is a method. It's a method.
You know. It's based on observational data in my surrounding environment,
and I look to it and I make a distinct
call about what the weather may or may not do.
(01:52):
And this is one of those things whether that we
kind of take for granted because we've got the little
Doppler radar systems in place, we can easily access information
about the weather whenever we want. But you kind of,
if you want to think about whether in really big
terms and even cosmic terms, you have to go all
(02:13):
the way back to when the atmosphere actually even developed.
And we won't go, you know, too deep into this,
but just consider for a second that atmosphere that life
depends on is created by life itself. So whether you
have back in the earliest of days when the Earth
(02:33):
formed really just rudimentary. We're talking about hydrogen and helium
hanging out on Earth, and not for very long either,
because hydrogen and helium are fast moving molecules, and at
that time in Earth's very young history, it was a
hot planet, and so they sped up even more in
the escape out into space. But then you have much
(02:54):
later volcanic activity happening. And with this volcanic activity happening,
you have steam escaping right from the volcanoes. You have
H two O, you have carbon dioxide, you have ammonia
which contains nitrogen, and you begin to see this sort
of base stock of the atmosphere building up. And then
(03:15):
a bit later you have the carbon dioxide being absorbed
by oceans. And this is great because now a bacterium
comes to comes to be and it gets a lot
of this energy from the Sun and from the carbon
dioxide in the oceans, and it's byproduct as a result
is oxygen, and all of a sudden boom, you have
the elements for an atmosphere that's right. Currently our atmosphere
(03:40):
consists of seventy percent nitrogen oxygen. Then you have point
nine argon point O three carbon dioxide, and the remaining
point of seven consists of water, vapor, hydrogen, ozone, neon, helium, crypton,
and xenon. Right. Instead, the more that life developed, the
more the these molecules were created and came to create
(04:03):
this envelope, this atmosphere that we live in, and it
became so supportive that it supported complex life, such as
say humans that became acutely aware of the tides of wind,
of the moon and the sun and began to obsess
about it. Yeah, I mean, indeed, I mean this is
(04:24):
the movement of our environment. We live in the atmosphere.
We live on the Earth, but we are we're slaves
of the atmosphere. And the better we can understand it,
the better we can predict it all the better. Now,
how long have we been keeping records of what the
weather is doing, because obviously we've been obsessing over the
weather since time out of mind. But when you look
at observation data, generally you go back to around nine
(04:48):
UM and because that's when observation stations became more uniform
in the way that they were collecting the data and
measuring it. So if you need to start point like
that's the easiest place to go to, right, But there
were other systems in place before that, but not as uniform, right,
not as uniform. For instance, UM the England and Wales
precipitation series, which measures rainfall and snow, that goes all
(05:11):
the way back to seventeen sixty six. The Central England
Temperature series, which covers temperature from the south the Midlands
to Lancashire, goes back to sixteen fifty nine. But again,
nineteen that's generally modern UM forecasting start date. Right now.
A lot of people will point to that date too
and say, oh, this is when we began to really
(05:32):
UM record information about hurricanes, and maybe that's why it
seems like there are more hurricanes lately because we only
have this limited data set, which may be a possibility. Yeah,
I mean that's always a concern when you're looking at
at patterns in our atmosphere and patterns and climate, is
that the records, the dependable records, only go back so far.
(05:54):
But again, we have been uh trying to forecast the
weather since uh our earliest days. It's pretty much one
of the earliest sciences tackled by any given culture. Because
you know, as we after the agrarian revolution especially, we
have crops that need watering life depends on the cycle
of the rains, the shrink and swell of the local river,
(06:16):
the coming of the monsoons, UH, the advance of dangerous
weather patterns UM you know, and again this is particularly
important for agriculturally bound societies that are depending upon this
artificially maintained version of vegetation that requires water, that requires
UH and again, like all of us is as a
slave to the atmosphere UM. And then as we develop
(06:39):
the surplus of these items, we start warring with each other.
So military navigation also becomes key. You need to know
what the weather is doing because you want to UH,
you want to game your advantages in trying to attack
or defend yourself from your adversary. And when you take
that situation on to the ocean, you have even more
can turns to deal with. There are several cases in history,
(07:03):
of course, where see weather has saved a nation from
an invading army, particularly in the case of the Japanese
being saved by the divine wind protecting them from Mongol invasion.
The fate of the Spanish armada headed towards towards England,
so it becomes important from a military standpoint, to be
able to tell what the weather is going to do.
It's important from an agricultural standpoint, and then when you
(07:25):
get into trade as well on the seas, you need
to be able to accurately depend on how this uh,
this this atmosphere is going to behave because on on
the ocean especially, this is a situation where the weather
can see you safely to your harbord destination or it
can just utterly destroy you and your economy in the
(07:45):
blink of an eye. Right, and before we had accurate
meteorological instruments to help us with this, to you know,
to accurately measure temperature, accurately measure pressure in the air,
and then compare that to our records over time. What
can you turn to? You turn to uh idioms, You
turn to time warn lore, um different sayings that are
(08:08):
based on observational data uh that deal with what the
weather may be about to do. Yeah, and then on
top of that you have the cultural layer, right, so
you have all of the traditions that are bound up
with weather in the seasons. And so this kind of
guiding principle of you know, sayings based on observational data
(08:31):
sometimes take on more of a superstitious quality, and people
begin to see these as guiding forces. And that's all
well and good, except that some are actually helpful and
some are not. So we're going to talk about the
ones that are actually rooted in in the scientific soundness.
Indeed examples where they're scientifically grounded at the route and
(08:53):
the game of cultural telephone has not really lost the
truth of it over time. All right, So we'll roll
one out for you. Now. Um, let me get one
of my best sailor voices. I guess here, red sky
in the morning sailors take horn and red sky at
night sailor's delight. There you go. Uh So, of course,
(09:18):
what we're talking about here is that blood red sky,
that the kind of fucia and red sky co mingling.
And what's behind it, Well, you're seeing a scattering of
sunlight by small particles, but they're they're suspended in dry,
dusty air. And that's key here because at sunset, these
conditions imply a zone of dry high pressure between you
(09:41):
in the sun, and since weather in the mid latitudes
moves mainly west to east, that means a day of
clear sailing is on the horizon for the next day.
But if you witness the same scattering of red wavelength
near sunrise, it implies that the calm high pressure zone
and has already passed and that a stormy low pressure
(10:03):
system could move through soon. So again, take the perspective
of someone who does not have Doppler radar at their disposal. Um,
you know, they're hanging out in the sixteen hundreds. They
need to go out on the boat the next day.
Their livelihood depends on it. These sort of signs and
symbols present to you in the sky would become really important,
but they're not always correct. A lot of this depends
(10:25):
on where you stand on the earth. Um, okay, because
this is very true, this sort of red sky in
the morning. Sailors take warning for those who are in
the mid latitudes, which include most of North America, Europe,
and Asia, as well South Africa and the southern halves
of South American Australia. But if you are in the
polls or in the tropics, where weather tends to progress
(10:45):
in the opposite direction, you'd want to reverse the saying. Okay,
it's no cultural right. You go to one part of
the world and they have a totally different thing. Yeah,
and of course that's going to come into play with
the globe try and sailors obviously. Alright, another one, and
this is what I had not heard of before. Um
(11:06):
if a few different versions of it, now haul out
my sailor voice too. Mackerel sky and Mayor's tale will
make lofty ships carry low sails. Mackerel in the sky,
three days dry, mackerel sky, mackerel sky, never long wed
and never long dry. Now that that I hear that,
(11:26):
and I have no idea what that even means, right,
because I don't know what the mackerel sky is, what
a mayor tail is, And then what does it mean
that ship carries low sails? You're waiting for Grendel to appear, right, Yeah,
Like when I first read it, I thought low sails,
like maybe that means that there's not enough wind filling
up the sails. But what it's actually saying is if
you look up in the sky, gentle sailor, and you
(11:47):
see a fish or a horse tail, Uh, there's a
storm approaching, and you better lower your sails to protect
them from the accompanying high winds Okay, which at least
to the question, what on earth is acral sky? Well,
mackerel sky known in Germany and France as sheet clouds.
These are large is a large, spreading assemblage of clouds
(12:08):
that resemble a series of waves or fish scales, with
streaks of blue sky peeking out between the puffs. If
you look at pictures of this that it kind of
looks marble to a certain extent. And then you have
Mare's tails, which are long thread like cirrus clouds, often
stretched by strong high level winds. And when we're looking
(12:30):
at this, what we're observing, uh, this all consists of
serial cumulus and alto cumulus clouds, which means there's moisture
high up in a cold sky at an altitude of
around eighteen thousand and thirty thousand feet or six thousand
to ten thousand meters. Uh. Simply put, these are the
cloud systems that develop prior to a storm. Um. And
(12:52):
the blue streaks that you see indicate that the clouds
are breaking up due to instability in the air. So
why is it correct? Well, again, these are these are
the cloud systems to developed tend to develop prior to
a storm. Uh. And both the clues, whether you're talking
Mackerel's or mayors suggest an impending storm about six to
eight hours away. If the clouds proceed in approaching warm front,
(13:14):
they'll thicken and the winds will veer from northwesternly to
more southwesternly directions. Now, if not, if the clouds mostly
consist of bigger, darker auto cumulus clouds, then you're likely
facing better weather in the short term in advance of
a possible cold front and an associated thunderstorms. So as
(13:36):
a general rule, the mackerel mayor sky thing holds out,
but it's kind of up in the air, no pun
intended um as to whether you're actually talking about strong
winds coming in or if you're talking about better weather
in the short term followed by potential thunderstorm. Yeah, and
again this isn't full proof, but it's the best gus
(13:56):
based on weather patterns and knowing what happens when conditions change, right,
And I think people pay attention to these kinds of
forms today because maybe they're they're cloud porn enthusiasts, but
really people would again stare at the sky in earnest
to try to figure out what was going to happen. Yeah,
you have to stake your life on something when it
(14:18):
comes to navigation, and this, some simple idiom are saying,
is ultimately better than nothing. This is all well and good,
but tell me, Julie about my knee. What is going
on with my knee? And it speaks to me, well, yeah,
I gotta say you're You're not alone obviously in feeling
this way. And in fact, Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine,
(14:39):
noticed that certain illnesses seem to worsen under particular weather conditions.
And you've probably heard people say it, you know, time
over time, like I can feel it, I can finish
weather coming. And according to Dr Aditya. Matto, writing for
n y U longown online Journal of Medicine, quote surveys
have demonstrated the upwards of any percent of patients believe
(15:01):
that weather plays a role in their arthritic pain. The
question is whether or not this is, in fact, uh
an actual thing. And I will say that the jury
is a bit out on this, okay, But you can
look at a two thousand and seven study by Mcallendon
at all. It's a multi site study which followed two
(15:22):
hundred patients with knee osteoarthritis over different times of the
year and used a well validated paining questionnaire. Called WOMAC
and data from the U, S, O, A, A, and
UH compared knee paying with different atmospheric conditions throughout the
continental US. What they found was statistically significant positive correlations.
(15:45):
Now why would this be. It's because your body is
responding to atmospheric pressure. You don't think about it, right,
because you don't necessarily feel it, But your bodily fluids
are trying to exist in a constant state of balance
with ambient air pressure. So as the barometer falls, as
with what happens with an approaching storm, your tissues can
(16:06):
swell in response, and that can irritate nerve endings and
cause your pain level to wratch it up a bit. Okay,
problem here is that that swelling happens on such a
small scale that it's it's difficult to objectively detect and
measure it. So researchers have to rely on people's subjective
accounts of pain, which, as we know, vary and they're
not always reliable. And there's also the psychological factor of priming. Right,
(16:30):
So you see approaching storm, maybe you start to feel achy.
Maybe you're paying just a little more attention to that
ever present condition, right, right, So that's not to say
there's not something there, it's just the jury is truly
still out on that. However, those who suffer from migraines
may have a level of sensitivity to their environment that
gives them a leg up on predicting the weather. And
(16:53):
according to Dr Caroline Bernstein, who is the clinical director
of the Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians comprehens of Headache Center, quote,
it maybe that people who get migraines are very susceptible
to any fluctuation, whether it's a weather change, foods, sleep,
or stress. Okay, well, I will keep that in mind
the next time I feel my knee talking to me. Yeah,
(17:16):
just see if your head hurts. Alright. That brings us
to our next one. This one is cold as the
Night when the stars shine bright, also known as clear
moon frost soon. So what is this one? That's basically
things basically saying, hey, if you have a clear sky,
it's going to be a cold or night, right, pretty
(17:37):
straightforward And and really the explanation of this one is
pretty straightforward too. So it gets into the basic realities
of how the sun heats our world. The Sun emits
a vast amount of energy travels across space in the
form of short wave radiation, and only a tiny portion
of this power actually reaches the surface. Um Most of
(17:58):
the atmosphere, fear is directly heated by solar radiation, but
rather by the terrestrial radiation that the planet itself emits.
So during the day, the Sun's shortwave radiation is absorbed
by the Earth and converted into heat. The examples I
often go back to when explaining this are, Okay, you
have a fried egg and you're gonna cook it on
(18:20):
a sidewalk in New York because you need some sort
of visible display of how hot it is for the
local news. Well, it's the heat emitted by the pavement
that's doing the frying, not the sun above. And that's
basically the reality of heat on our world. Also, you
have a mountain climber. They're climbing up a mountain they're
in encountering increasingly colder conditions as they ascend, despite effectively
(18:45):
moving closer to the sun. Okay, so when the sun sets,
the planet begins radiating this heat at various rates depending
on the materials involved, and lacking clouds to capture that
heat and hold it in place, the surface and atmosphere
grow increasingly colder through radiative heat loss. So essentially, again,
(19:06):
solar energy coming down hitting the Earth, it's emitted as
terrestrial radiation, and if there aren't clouds up there to
keep it and contain it, it just goes off into
space again. So yes, indeed, if you have a night
with no cloud cover, it is going to be colder
because you're going to have more heat loss. That makes
sense because the clouds are kind of like a blanket
on the night exactly. Yeah, it's like sleeping without your blanket.
(19:27):
You're gonna wake up a little chili without your blank eyes.
All right. The next one doesn't have a neat little
rhyme to it, So attempt something crickets a bit chirpen.
The sun must be bourbon, Okay, I like it an Yeah,
so crickets. It turns out chirp faster and warmer conditions,
(19:47):
and more slowly as the air turns more frigid. And
this is particularly true in the species of campus full
tony and uh you probably have you know you grew
up in a rural area right as a youngster, as
did I. And that's one of those features of nighttime,
especially a summer. You hear that chirping, And it's kind
(20:10):
of amazing to me that this isn't something that I
knew as folklore. Yeah, me neither. Despite just yeah that
that cacophony of insect noises that you deal with growing
up in a rural environment. So you're probably wondering, how
can I calculate this air pressure because that's actually what
they're reflecting here. Well, there's edition of the American Naturalists
(20:31):
by A Dolbear who created this formula T equals fifty
plus n minus four divided by four, where t equals
temperature f and n equals chirp rate per minute. And
thankfully we have the Old Farmer's Almanac to help us
convert cricket chirps to degrees fahrenheit by counting the number
(20:55):
of chirps in fourteen seconds and then adding fort to
get the temperature. Okay, that sounds a bit easier, right,
So example, thirty chirps plus forty equals seventy degrees. So
why is this important? Well, because listening eve's dropping on
the mating calls of crickets can actually give you an
(21:16):
idea whether or not a warm front is coming or
a cold fronts coming. But I gotta tell you it
has its limitations because it's only accurate down to fifty
five degrees fahrenheit. Uh. Any lower than that than the
crickets take off, they're not really interested in hanging out me. Yeah. Well,
(21:38):
you mentioned the Farmer's Almanac there, and and I have
I have to ask, like, what is the deal with
the farm Farmers Alminate? Because it's one of those books
that has always been in the background in my life.
I think my grandfather had would have a copy setting around,
and I may have like lead through it once or
twice as a kid. And you see it, you know,
pretty much in any bookstore you go to, that will
(21:59):
be Armer's Almanac there. And I really have no idea
exactly what to do. I just always assumed it was
just a whole bunch of old wives tales and a
little you know, idioms and sayings about the weather. Look
at the size of a wooly caterpillar to tell what
the rain is going to do, that sort of thing.
And I've never really paid it much attention beyond that. Yeah,
I remember when I was a little it was usually
a fixture in my relatives bathrooms. Right, it was good
(22:21):
bathroom reading, and it turns out that there are two
different farmers almanacs. Okay, they're competing. There's the Farmers Almanac
and the Old Farmers Almanac, founded in eighteen twelve and
seventeen ninety two, respectively, and they both rely on proprietary
formulas for their weather prognostications and how stuff works. Actually
(22:44):
has an article on this. Kate Kirshner wrote it, and
she says, quote, the Farmer's Almanac uses mathematical and astronomical
formulas which are passed along from one anonymous prognosticator to another,
and this almanac formula is really just entrusted to what
they say is one living being, a being, not not
(23:04):
not a person, not a human, but a being. Yeah, okay,
well that makes me think it might just be like
a centaur or something. Right. Wouldn't that be wonderful if
it is a centaur and it is a living being? Right? Whatever?
This living being is, this weather forecaster since the publication's
inception has gone by the pseudonym Caleb weather Be And uh,
(23:30):
they keep pretty mum about Caleb about who he or
she is. They just confirmed that this person exists. That's
the only thing they'll confirm. Now, the Old Farmer's Almanac
relies on a theory that weather is a result of
magnetic storms on the sun surface, and the forecast a
predicted based on a formula that is locked away in
(23:50):
a black box at the headquarters. Wow, let's see, I
had no idea it was this kind of secrety and
could right. It feels masonic, right it does. Um. Now,
both of the publications claim in accuracy rate when it
comes to weather, but independent verifications looking at you know,
(24:10):
years of data, say it's more like a coin toss about. Okay.
So they each have their own systems based in whatever
is happening on the sun or some sort of secret methodology,
and it just kind of lines up with what's actually
happening to a degree that you can roll with. That's
the idea, right, like you can there's fifty chance that
(24:32):
their year out from now, um forecast is going to
be correct. Plus like you'll get some sort of tip
about how to remove you know, butterbean stains or something. Okay, Yeah,
you don't get that from your just iPhone weather app,
you know, now you don't useful data. Siri will not
tell you that information, all right, So there you have
(24:53):
it just a little inside in the world of weather superstition,
and how in some cases it does line up with
what's actually going on in this complex chaotic system of
the atmosphere. Um and I know, you know, let's let's
call over the robot and have just a little bit
of listener mail. We got this from Betsy Lange, and
(25:17):
she starts out by saying, I had a paradigm shift
two years ago while listening to stuff to play her mind,
a marathon of it at a rainy campground near Barcelona.
My master's thesis was on endocrine disruptors, and I cowered
in fear of all the things plastic, even fearing the
future of science and society. Your podcast, the first I
ever listened to and still my favorite, woke me up
and reminded me of the wonder and science, transforming me
(25:40):
back into the optimists slash futurists that I forgot I
was during those years of wiping butts. Just in parentheses,
I was at home parent for six years, she says.
I'm writing to you because you've inspired me along with
so many others, and I'm in the process of creating
a related but very different audio program that I hope
you and or some of your listens can get involved
(26:01):
in my production is called Stamma Gora and it will
use the voices of people around the world to have
a conversation about science and math topics. Contributors can submit
short audio files on topics that intrigue them, interviews, monologues, debates, presentations,
musical composition, and she said they don't need professional equipment.
(26:22):
She said she wants more of a grassroots sound. So
the first phase of this project is underway and a
few guys are interested in it. Make sure you go
to ww dot quilla dot info that's q U I
l l A dot info because she is accepting audio
(26:42):
entries until June UM. So if you guys are interested
in that looks like a really cool project, do check
it out. Indeed, that sounds really fascinating. In the meantime,
if you want to check out more of what we
do here, head on over to stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all of our
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(27:03):
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(27:24):
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Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and my name is Julie Douglas. Julie,
what's your favorite non scientific weather forecasting tool one that
(00:26):
we're going to talk about today? The whole like I
feel it in my bones? That one's an interesting because
I do feel it in my bones and particularly my
knee if there's there's some sort of weather change coming
you do. So yesterday when that ominous front was rolling
through Atlanta and we were looking out the windows, were
(00:46):
you were your knees like buckling? No, my my right knee,
which is the one that speaks to me. It was
fine then, But earlier in the week, like the day
before and the day before that, that's when I felt
it and I was thinking, oh, well, maybe the thing
that they always say is true, and that means that
some sort of weather front is coming in. Is that right?
Me an old gaming injury. No, it is a dancing injury,
(01:08):
actually dancing in the field. You know, there's a whole
you know how it goes. I do. My favorite, my
current favorite non scientific weather forecasting tool is it has
to do with the chalk drawings that I do with
my son in the driveway. The more that accumulate, I know,
the more likely it is to rain. So once we
(01:29):
reached the point where we've covered every foreseeable space with
scribbles and elephants, I know that it's got to be
about to rain, because it means like two weeks is past. Okay.
I like that. It is a method. It's a method.
You know. It's based on observational data in my surrounding environment,
and I look to it and I make a distinct
call about what the weather may or may not do.
(01:52):
And this is one of those things whether that we
kind of take for granted because we've got the little
Doppler radar systems in place, we can easily access information
about the weather whenever we want. But you kind of,
if you want to think about whether in really big
terms and even cosmic terms, you have to go all
(02:13):
the way back to when the atmosphere actually even developed.
And we won't go, you know, too deep into this,
but just consider for a second that atmosphere that life
depends on is created by life itself. So whether you
have back in the earliest of days when the Earth
(02:33):
formed really just rudimentary. We're talking about hydrogen and helium
hanging out on Earth, and not for very long either,
because hydrogen and helium are fast moving molecules, and at
that time in Earth's very young history, it was a
hot planet, and so they sped up even more in
the escape out into space. But then you have much
(02:54):
later volcanic activity happening. And with this volcanic activity happening,
you have steam escaping right from the volcanoes. You have
H two O, you have carbon dioxide, you have ammonia
which contains nitrogen, and you begin to see this sort
of base stock of the atmosphere building up. And then
(03:15):
a bit later you have the carbon dioxide being absorbed
by oceans. And this is great because now a bacterium
comes to comes to be and it gets a lot
of this energy from the Sun and from the carbon
dioxide in the oceans, and it's byproduct as a result
is oxygen, and all of a sudden boom, you have
the elements for an atmosphere that's right. Currently our atmosphere
(03:40):
consists of seventy percent nitrogen oxygen. Then you have point
nine argon point O three carbon dioxide, and the remaining
point of seven consists of water, vapor, hydrogen, ozone, neon, helium, crypton,
and xenon. Right. Instead, the more that life developed, the
more the these molecules were created and came to create
(04:03):
this envelope, this atmosphere that we live in, and it
became so supportive that it supported complex life, such as
say humans that became acutely aware of the tides of wind,
of the moon and the sun and began to obsess
about it. Yeah, I mean, indeed, I mean this is
(04:24):
the movement of our environment. We live in the atmosphere.
We live on the Earth, but we are we're slaves
of the atmosphere. And the better we can understand it,
the better we can predict it all the better. Now,
how long have we been keeping records of what the
weather is doing, because obviously we've been obsessing over the
weather since time out of mind. But when you look
at observation data, generally you go back to around nine
(04:48):
UM and because that's when observation stations became more uniform
in the way that they were collecting the data and
measuring it. So if you need to start point like
that's the easiest place to go to, right, But there
were other systems in place before that, but not as uniform, right,
not as uniform. For instance, UM the England and Wales
precipitation series, which measures rainfall and snow, that goes all
(05:11):
the way back to seventeen sixty six. The Central England
Temperature series, which covers temperature from the south the Midlands
to Lancashire, goes back to sixteen fifty nine. But again,
nineteen that's generally modern UM forecasting start date. Right now.
A lot of people will point to that date too
and say, oh, this is when we began to really
(05:32):
UM record information about hurricanes, and maybe that's why it
seems like there are more hurricanes lately because we only
have this limited data set, which may be a possibility. Yeah,
I mean that's always a concern when you're looking at
at patterns in our atmosphere and patterns and climate, is
that the records, the dependable records, only go back so far.
(05:54):
But again, we have been uh trying to forecast the
weather since uh our earliest days. It's pretty much one
of the earliest sciences tackled by any given culture. Because
you know, as we after the agrarian revolution especially, we
have crops that need watering life depends on the cycle
of the rains, the shrink and swell of the local river,
(06:16):
the coming of the monsoons, UH, the advance of dangerous
weather patterns UM you know, and again this is particularly
important for agriculturally bound societies that are depending upon this
artificially maintained version of vegetation that requires water, that requires
UH and again, like all of us is as a
slave to the atmosphere UM. And then as we develop
(06:39):
the surplus of these items, we start warring with each other.
So military navigation also becomes key. You need to know
what the weather is doing because you want to UH,
you want to game your advantages in trying to attack
or defend yourself from your adversary. And when you take
that situation on to the ocean, you have even more
can turns to deal with. There are several cases in history,
(07:03):
of course, where see weather has saved a nation from
an invading army, particularly in the case of the Japanese
being saved by the divine wind protecting them from Mongol invasion.
The fate of the Spanish armada headed towards towards England,
so it becomes important from a military standpoint, to be
able to tell what the weather is going to do.
It's important from an agricultural standpoint, and then when you
(07:25):
get into trade as well on the seas, you need
to be able to accurately depend on how this uh,
this this atmosphere is going to behave because on on
the ocean especially, this is a situation where the weather
can see you safely to your harbord destination or it
can just utterly destroy you and your economy in the
(07:45):
blink of an eye. Right, and before we had accurate
meteorological instruments to help us with this, to you know,
to accurately measure temperature, accurately measure pressure in the air,
and then compare that to our records over time. What
can you turn to? You turn to uh idioms, You
turn to time warn lore, um different sayings that are
(08:08):
based on observational data uh that deal with what the
weather may be about to do. Yeah, and then on
top of that you have the cultural layer, right, so
you have all of the traditions that are bound up
with weather in the seasons. And so this kind of
guiding principle of you know, sayings based on observational data
(08:31):
sometimes take on more of a superstitious quality, and people
begin to see these as guiding forces. And that's all
well and good, except that some are actually helpful and
some are not. So we're going to talk about the
ones that are actually rooted in in the scientific soundness.
Indeed examples where they're scientifically grounded at the route and
(08:53):
the game of cultural telephone has not really lost the
truth of it over time. All right, So we'll roll
one out for you. Now. Um, let me get one
of my best sailor voices. I guess here, red sky
in the morning sailors take horn and red sky at
night sailor's delight. There you go. Uh So, of course,
(09:18):
what we're talking about here is that blood red sky,
that the kind of fucia and red sky co mingling.
And what's behind it, Well, you're seeing a scattering of
sunlight by small particles, but they're they're suspended in dry,
dusty air. And that's key here because at sunset, these
conditions imply a zone of dry high pressure between you
(09:41):
in the sun, and since weather in the mid latitudes
moves mainly west to east, that means a day of
clear sailing is on the horizon for the next day.
But if you witness the same scattering of red wavelength
near sunrise, it implies that the calm high pressure zone
and has already passed and that a stormy low pressure
(10:03):
system could move through soon. So again, take the perspective
of someone who does not have Doppler radar at their disposal. Um,
you know, they're hanging out in the sixteen hundreds. They
need to go out on the boat the next day.
Their livelihood depends on it. These sort of signs and
symbols present to you in the sky would become really important,
but they're not always correct. A lot of this depends
(10:25):
on where you stand on the earth. Um, okay, because
this is very true, this sort of red sky in
the morning. Sailors take warning for those who are in
the mid latitudes, which include most of North America, Europe,
and Asia, as well South Africa and the southern halves
of South American Australia. But if you are in the
polls or in the tropics, where weather tends to progress
(10:45):
in the opposite direction, you'd want to reverse the saying. Okay,
it's no cultural right. You go to one part of
the world and they have a totally different thing. Yeah,
and of course that's going to come into play with
the globe try and sailors obviously. Alright, another one, and
this is what I had not heard of before. Um
(11:06):
if a few different versions of it, now haul out
my sailor voice too. Mackerel sky and Mayor's tale will
make lofty ships carry low sails. Mackerel in the sky,
three days dry, mackerel sky, mackerel sky, never long wed
and never long dry. Now that that I hear that,
(11:26):
and I have no idea what that even means, right,
because I don't know what the mackerel sky is, what
a mayor tail is, And then what does it mean
that ship carries low sails? You're waiting for Grendel to appear, right, Yeah,
Like when I first read it, I thought low sails,
like maybe that means that there's not enough wind filling
up the sails. But what it's actually saying is if
you look up in the sky, gentle sailor, and you
(11:47):
see a fish or a horse tail, Uh, there's a
storm approaching, and you better lower your sails to protect
them from the accompanying high winds Okay, which at least
to the question, what on earth is acral sky? Well,
mackerel sky known in Germany and France as sheet clouds.
These are large is a large, spreading assemblage of clouds
(12:08):
that resemble a series of waves or fish scales, with
streaks of blue sky peeking out between the puffs. If
you look at pictures of this that it kind of
looks marble to a certain extent. And then you have
Mare's tails, which are long thread like cirrus clouds, often
stretched by strong high level winds. And when we're looking
(12:30):
at this, what we're observing, uh, this all consists of
serial cumulus and alto cumulus clouds, which means there's moisture
high up in a cold sky at an altitude of
around eighteen thousand and thirty thousand feet or six thousand
to ten thousand meters. Uh. Simply put, these are the
cloud systems that develop prior to a storm. Um. And
(12:52):
the blue streaks that you see indicate that the clouds
are breaking up due to instability in the air. So
why is it correct? Well, again, these are these are
the cloud systems to developed tend to develop prior to
a storm. Uh. And both the clues, whether you're talking
Mackerel's or mayors suggest an impending storm about six to
eight hours away. If the clouds proceed in approaching warm front,
(13:14):
they'll thicken and the winds will veer from northwesternly to
more southwesternly directions. Now, if not, if the clouds mostly
consist of bigger, darker auto cumulus clouds, then you're likely
facing better weather in the short term in advance of
a possible cold front and an associated thunderstorms. So as
(13:36):
a general rule, the mackerel mayor sky thing holds out,
but it's kind of up in the air, no pun
intended um as to whether you're actually talking about strong
winds coming in or if you're talking about better weather
in the short term followed by potential thunderstorm. Yeah, and
again this isn't full proof, but it's the best gus
(13:56):
based on weather patterns and knowing what happens when conditions change, right,
And I think people pay attention to these kinds of
forms today because maybe they're they're cloud porn enthusiasts, but
really people would again stare at the sky in earnest
to try to figure out what was going to happen. Yeah,
you have to stake your life on something when it
(14:18):
comes to navigation, and this, some simple idiom are saying,
is ultimately better than nothing. This is all well and good,
but tell me, Julie about my knee. What is going
on with my knee? And it speaks to me, well, yeah,
I gotta say you're You're not alone obviously in feeling
this way. And in fact, Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine,
(14:39):
noticed that certain illnesses seem to worsen under particular weather conditions.
And you've probably heard people say it, you know, time
over time, like I can feel it, I can finish
weather coming. And according to Dr Aditya. Matto, writing for
n y U longown online Journal of Medicine, quote surveys
have demonstrated the upwards of any percent of patients believe
(15:01):
that weather plays a role in their arthritic pain. The
question is whether or not this is, in fact, uh
an actual thing. And I will say that the jury
is a bit out on this, okay, But you can
look at a two thousand and seven study by Mcallendon
at all. It's a multi site study which followed two
(15:22):
hundred patients with knee osteoarthritis over different times of the
year and used a well validated paining questionnaire. Called WOMAC
and data from the U, S, O, A, A, and
UH compared knee paying with different atmospheric conditions throughout the
continental US. What they found was statistically significant positive correlations.
(15:45):
Now why would this be. It's because your body is
responding to atmospheric pressure. You don't think about it, right,
because you don't necessarily feel it, But your bodily fluids
are trying to exist in a constant state of balance
with ambient air pressure. So as the barometer falls, as
with what happens with an approaching storm, your tissues can
(16:06):
swell in response, and that can irritate nerve endings and
cause your pain level to wratch it up a bit. Okay,
problem here is that that swelling happens on such a
small scale that it's it's difficult to objectively detect and
measure it. So researchers have to rely on people's subjective
accounts of pain, which, as we know, vary and they're
not always reliable. And there's also the psychological factor of priming. Right,
(16:30):
So you see approaching storm, maybe you start to feel achy.
Maybe you're paying just a little more attention to that
ever present condition, right, right, So that's not to say
there's not something there, it's just the jury is truly
still out on that. However, those who suffer from migraines
may have a level of sensitivity to their environment that
gives them a leg up on predicting the weather. And
(16:53):
according to Dr Caroline Bernstein, who is the clinical director
of the Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians comprehens of Headache Center, quote,
it maybe that people who get migraines are very susceptible
to any fluctuation, whether it's a weather change, foods, sleep,
or stress. Okay, well, I will keep that in mind
the next time I feel my knee talking to me. Yeah,
(17:16):
just see if your head hurts. Alright. That brings us
to our next one. This one is cold as the
Night when the stars shine bright, also known as clear
moon frost soon. So what is this one? That's basically
things basically saying, hey, if you have a clear sky,
it's going to be a cold or night, right, pretty
(17:37):
straightforward And and really the explanation of this one is
pretty straightforward too. So it gets into the basic realities
of how the sun heats our world. The Sun emits
a vast amount of energy travels across space in the
form of short wave radiation, and only a tiny portion
of this power actually reaches the surface. Um Most of
(17:58):
the atmosphere, fear is directly heated by solar radiation, but
rather by the terrestrial radiation that the planet itself emits.
So during the day, the Sun's shortwave radiation is absorbed
by the Earth and converted into heat. The examples I
often go back to when explaining this are, Okay, you
have a fried egg and you're gonna cook it on
(18:20):
a sidewalk in New York because you need some sort
of visible display of how hot it is for the
local news. Well, it's the heat emitted by the pavement
that's doing the frying, not the sun above. And that's
basically the reality of heat on our world. Also, you
have a mountain climber. They're climbing up a mountain they're
in encountering increasingly colder conditions as they ascend, despite effectively
(18:45):
moving closer to the sun. Okay, so when the sun sets,
the planet begins radiating this heat at various rates depending
on the materials involved, and lacking clouds to capture that
heat and hold it in place, the surface and atmosphere
grow increasingly colder through radiative heat loss. So essentially, again,
(19:06):
solar energy coming down hitting the Earth, it's emitted as
terrestrial radiation, and if there aren't clouds up there to
keep it and contain it, it just goes off into
space again. So yes, indeed, if you have a night
with no cloud cover, it is going to be colder
because you're going to have more heat loss. That makes
sense because the clouds are kind of like a blanket
on the night exactly. Yeah, it's like sleeping without your blanket.
(19:27):
You're gonna wake up a little chili without your blank eyes.
All right. The next one doesn't have a neat little
rhyme to it, So attempt something crickets a bit chirpen.
The sun must be bourbon, Okay, I like it an Yeah,
so crickets. It turns out chirp faster and warmer conditions,
(19:47):
and more slowly as the air turns more frigid. And
this is particularly true in the species of campus full
tony and uh you probably have you know you grew
up in a rural area right as a youngster, as
did I. And that's one of those features of nighttime,
especially a summer. You hear that chirping, And it's kind
(20:10):
of amazing to me that this isn't something that I
knew as folklore. Yeah, me neither. Despite just yeah that
that cacophony of insect noises that you deal with growing
up in a rural environment. So you're probably wondering, how
can I calculate this air pressure because that's actually what
they're reflecting here. Well, there's edition of the American Naturalists
(20:31):
by A Dolbear who created this formula T equals fifty
plus n minus four divided by four, where t equals
temperature f and n equals chirp rate per minute. And
thankfully we have the Old Farmer's Almanac to help us
convert cricket chirps to degrees fahrenheit by counting the number
(20:55):
of chirps in fourteen seconds and then adding fort to
get the temperature. Okay, that sounds a bit easier, right,
So example, thirty chirps plus forty equals seventy degrees. So
why is this important? Well, because listening eve's dropping on
the mating calls of crickets can actually give you an
(21:16):
idea whether or not a warm front is coming or
a cold fronts coming. But I gotta tell you it
has its limitations because it's only accurate down to fifty
five degrees fahrenheit. Uh. Any lower than that than the
crickets take off, they're not really interested in hanging out me. Yeah. Well,
(21:38):
you mentioned the Farmer's Almanac there, and and I have
I have to ask, like, what is the deal with
the farm Farmers Alminate? Because it's one of those books
that has always been in the background in my life.
I think my grandfather had would have a copy setting around,
and I may have like lead through it once or
twice as a kid. And you see it, you know,
pretty much in any bookstore you go to, that will
(21:59):
be Armer's Almanac there. And I really have no idea
exactly what to do. I just always assumed it was
just a whole bunch of old wives tales and a
little you know, idioms and sayings about the weather. Look
at the size of a wooly caterpillar to tell what
the rain is going to do, that sort of thing.
And I've never really paid it much attention beyond that. Yeah,
I remember when I was a little it was usually
a fixture in my relatives bathrooms. Right, it was good
(22:21):
bathroom reading, and it turns out that there are two
different farmers almanacs. Okay, they're competing. There's the Farmers Almanac
and the Old Farmers Almanac, founded in eighteen twelve and
seventeen ninety two, respectively, and they both rely on proprietary
formulas for their weather prognostications and how stuff works. Actually
(22:44):
has an article on this. Kate Kirshner wrote it, and
she says, quote, the Farmer's Almanac uses mathematical and astronomical
formulas which are passed along from one anonymous prognosticator to another,
and this almanac formula is really just entrusted to what
they say is one living being, a being, not not
(23:04):
not a person, not a human, but a being. Yeah, okay,
well that makes me think it might just be like
a centaur or something. Right. Wouldn't that be wonderful if
it is a centaur and it is a living being? Right? Whatever?
This living being is, this weather forecaster since the publication's
inception has gone by the pseudonym Caleb weather Be And uh,
(23:30):
they keep pretty mum about Caleb about who he or
she is. They just confirmed that this person exists. That's
the only thing they'll confirm. Now, the Old Farmer's Almanac
relies on a theory that weather is a result of
magnetic storms on the sun surface, and the forecast a
predicted based on a formula that is locked away in
(23:50):
a black box at the headquarters. Wow, let's see, I
had no idea it was this kind of secrety and
could right. It feels masonic, right it does. Um. Now,
both of the publications claim in accuracy rate when it
comes to weather, but independent verifications looking at you know,
(24:10):
years of data, say it's more like a coin toss about. Okay.
So they each have their own systems based in whatever
is happening on the sun or some sort of secret methodology,
and it just kind of lines up with what's actually
happening to a degree that you can roll with. That's
the idea, right, like you can there's fifty chance that
(24:32):
their year out from now, um forecast is going to
be correct. Plus like you'll get some sort of tip
about how to remove you know, butterbean stains or something. Okay, Yeah,
you don't get that from your just iPhone weather app,
you know, now you don't useful data. Siri will not
tell you that information, all right, So there you have
(24:53):
it just a little inside in the world of weather superstition,
and how in some cases it does line up with
what's actually going on in this complex chaotic system of
the atmosphere. Um and I know, you know, let's let's
call over the robot and have just a little bit
of listener mail. We got this from Betsy Lange, and
(25:17):
she starts out by saying, I had a paradigm shift
two years ago while listening to stuff to play her mind,
a marathon of it at a rainy campground near Barcelona.
My master's thesis was on endocrine disruptors, and I cowered
in fear of all the things plastic, even fearing the
future of science and society. Your podcast, the first I
ever listened to and still my favorite, woke me up
and reminded me of the wonder and science, transforming me
(25:40):
back into the optimists slash futurists that I forgot I
was during those years of wiping butts. Just in parentheses,
I was at home parent for six years, she says.
I'm writing to you because you've inspired me along with
so many others, and I'm in the process of creating
a related but very different audio program that I hope
you and or some of your listens can get involved
(26:01):
in my production is called Stamma Gora and it will
use the voices of people around the world to have
a conversation about science and math topics. Contributors can submit
short audio files on topics that intrigue them, interviews, monologues, debates, presentations,
musical composition, and she said they don't need professional equipment.
(26:22):
She said she wants more of a grassroots sound. So
the first phase of this project is underway and a
few guys are interested in it. Make sure you go
to ww dot quilla dot info that's q U I
l l A dot info because she is accepting audio
(26:42):
entries until June UM. So if you guys are interested
in that looks like a really cool project, do check
it out. Indeed, that sounds really fascinating. In the meantime,
if you want to check out more of what we
do here, head on over to stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all of our
guest episodes, videos, blog post links out to social media
(27:03):
accounts you name it, and hete for. On the landing
page for this episode, we'll make sure we include some
links to some related contents, such as that Farmers Albanach
article on how stuff works, as well as an article
on whether from how stuff works dot com. And if
you have some thoughts about these superstitions, if you get
a little wrestling in your bonnes when it starts to
(27:24):
rain out, let us know. You can drop us a
line by emailing us below the mind at how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, is it how stuff works dot com
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