WEATHER PREDICTIONS

Evening Star, Issue 21619, 15 January 1934, Page 5

WEATHER PREDICTIONS

OLD SAYINGS UNTRUE “ Will it rain to-morrow?” This is a question, says Sir Napier Shaw, that has “ thrilled humanity throughout the ages.” In a book which he has called ‘ The Drama of Weather ’ the famous meteorologist sees the heavens ■ as a vast stage, across which is for ever moving, witli more intensely dramatic action than is to be seen in any human play, the grand pageantry of cloud and storm, lightning, rain and snow, and world-encircling winds, says the ‘ Daily Mai!.’

At the same time he deals with the ever-changing yet eternal “plot” of the weather in an original way. Speaking of the “human interest” of weather, Sir Napier says:— None will deny that it is the weather that moulds the life of man.

The human race may have realised its primary existence in the rank growth of torrid vegetation, needing no protection and no food but that which the forest or the jangle would naturally afford; but the first step towards agriculture and a permanent abode would need an appreciation of the conditions of weather, and every stop of progress would bo just as dependent as the first on ’ a knowledge of the ways of the weather.

One ‘‘ weird tradition " Sir Napier notes associates impendjng rain or fair weather with the. moon bn its back.

“ It can hardly be justified,’? he says, “ for the way the moon appears to lie •depends merely on the relative position of the sun, and goes through its regular sequence with the year.” He quotes other long-cherished “ proverbial prognostics,” which are to be regarded simply as “ the vague expression of experience.” Among them are the following: Wet Friday, wet Sunday. Rain before 7, fine before 11. Rain from the east, twenty-four hours at least.

Fine weather coming if there is enough blue to make a sailor’s breeches.

A red sky at night is the shepherd’s delight. A rainbow in the morning in the shepherd’s warning. If the sun goes pale to bed ’twill rain to-morrow, so ’tis said. The north wind doth blow and we shall have snow. Sir Napier reveals the interesting fact that in the summer of 1914 clouds were to have been filmed as part of the study of weather in England. But the war intervened “ and the apparatus has joined the ranks of the unemployed,”