By Dora St. Martin

The trouble with weather forecasting is that it’s right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it, according to Patrick Young. 

 If you are like me and live by the weather – play when it’s sunny and hunker down when it rains – this past June was a difficult month.  June was not only the wettest June in Maine’s recorded history, but also New England’s coolest June in 27 years.  

The month has finally passed and we can, hopefully, look forward to several months of brighter skies.  But this past month has left me wondering, couldn’t we have been better prepared?  I think many of us New Englanders live by the old adage, if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.  But what if we could predict the weather?

Before satellites and 24-hour weather channels (that are not always very accurate or long range) how did people predict the weather?  In the earliest days people relied on their instincts, remembering what the air would “feel like” before a storm or a rain.  

Farmers believed their animals could predict bad weather.  Cows often lie down before a storm.  Farmers explained this by saying that cows sense moisture in the air and are making sure they have somewhere dry to lie down.  Other animals also react to weather.  Birds flying high in the sky indicate the weather will remain fair, ants build the walls of their hills higher just before bad weather and cats will clean behind their ears before a rain.   

In colonial times more scientific methods took hold and farmers and sailors relied on almanacs to help them predict the weather. 

 For 217 years, “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” has used a technique to forecast the weather for an entire year ahead.  Under its founding editor, Robert Thomas, the first issue of “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” was published in 1792 during George Washington’s first term as president.  Thomas, for his observations, used a complex series of natural cycles to devise a secret weather forecasting formula, traditionally said to be 80 percent correct.  Thomas’ formula is still kept safely tucked away in a black tin box at the Almanac offices in Dublin, N.H.  At the library we still get calls to consult several almanacs for those planning ahead for weddings and family reunions.

Today, meteorologists use lots of complicated equipment, such as computers and satellites, to forecast the weather.  Sometimes they will have many different computer models with different predictions.  Luckily we have access to a growing amount of free weather data to make our own predictions.  

One of the best discussions of weather and long-range forecast maps may be found on the National Weather Service’s Web sites, www.weather.gov or www.noaa.gov.  These sites include some of the same weather maps used by the experts.  The government also keeps the world’s largest archive of weather data at the National Climatic Data Center at www.ncdc.noaa.gov. 

 Real-time weather and buoy observations (including most of the buoys off the coast of Maine) can be found at www.iwindsurf.com and www.ndbc.noaa.gov.  

Check out these Web sites and more books on weather and weather forecasting at the McArthur Public Library, a great place to spend a day no matter if your cows are standing up or lying down.

Dora St. Martin is director of McArthur Public Library.