Weather Legends

Perhaps you’ve already heard of some weather myths, like “Lightning never strikes the same place.” However, do you know their history?

Groundhog Day happens every 2nd of February, and was mostly celebrated in Pennsylvania, USA. Groundhog Day was a fun way of trying to predict the weather with animals. The holiday was best known for the 1993 movie, also with the name of Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. This movie illustrated the character Phil experiencing this day over and over.

Groundhog Day was taken from the German celebration of Candlemas on 2 February, also known as Dotchstag or Badger Day. It was said that if a badger refused to get out of its set, it meant that there would be four more weeks of winter snow. That made locals usually stay at home for the next four weeks. As the German-speaking Pennsylvanian Dutch settled in America, the tradition was brought here with the groundhog replacing the badger.

Punxsutawney Phil was said to be the great weather forecaster, and even though the life span of a groundhog was about 6-10years. Local officials say that it was the same Punxsutawney Phil all along. If that were real, Punxsutawney Phil would have lived for about 2 centuries.

When Punxsutawney Phil climbs out of his burrow and sees his shadow, he will hurry back into his burrow, which means four more weeks of snow. Punxsutawney Phil’s predictions had become worse in his second century, and according to the US-based National Centers for Environmental Information, only 30% of his predictions were correct between 2015 and 2024.

There are also many other weather tales about different holidays, animals, and even signs in the sky, such as St. Swithin’s Day.

The 15th of July is St. Swithin’s Day, which was the day that predicted the weather for the 40 days later. An old tale says that St. Swithin was the humble Bishop of Winchest who died in 862. He was so humble that he requested to be buried in the graveyard rather than within the cathedral itself.

On the 15th of July, several years after he had died, his body was being moved, and that angered the spirit of St. Swithin. The saint sent a great storm that raged for 40 days.

Now, if it was raining on the 15th of July, it was thought to rain for the next 40 days. However, the Met Office says that the rain (if there ever was one) never went on for 40 days. And so, this was another one that was proved wrong.

You might hear someone say this to you every afternoon or morning, and this was proven to be mostly right. This saying means that when the sky shows a reddish color, it would be a clear day tomorrow; but if the sky is red at dawn, it would be a rainy day.

Research says that when the sun rises and also goes down, it is going the light is going through the thickest part of the atmosphere. When it is red, it usually means that there is a lot of dust and moisture particles, which would soon form into rain.