Weather Folklore Fact or Fiction? Exploring Myths About Predicting the Weather

In this episode of Wildly Curious (formerly For the Love of Nature), co-hosts Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole delve into weather folklore, breaking down popular myths like “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight” and the lore surrounding woolly bears. They explore whether these sayings hold any scientific truth or if they’re simply tales passed down through generations. From predicting storms to strange tornado myths, find out how humans have long tried to forecast the weather without technology.

Perfect for weather enthusiasts, science lovers, or anyone curious about the intersection of myth and nature.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to For the Love of Nature, a podcast where we tell you everything you need to know about nature and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Laura.
And I'm Katy. And today we're talking about, since weather has such a large impact on our lives, humans have created a variety of folklore to predict it, not all of which are true.
Yeah, I feel like humans are great at coming up with stories like, sure, that's why it's that way. That's why it's that way. Whether or not it's scientifically accurate is another thing.
But listen, the one I'm going to talk about, yeah, I'll just leave it at that.
We actually, I thought about this topic because I've talked about it a couple of times for programs at work, but also when I was in ninth grade, my science teacher for the time, it was Earth System Science, but he was a meteorologist by training. So we did a whole unit on weather folklore and learning about what's true, what's not true, why is it these ones, and the weather, how all the weather stuff works. It was fascinating, but only because I'm a nerd.
Yeah, but only because I'm a nerd.
So did we just want to jump right in or did you have any news?
Yeah, I had some nature news, but the website isn't really coming up right now. What the monkey? Okay, here we go.
Here we go. So this one is, sorry. When I'm not swearing, I'm just saying random things, like some nutcracker, holy cannoli with a bowl full of macaroni, you know, that kind of stuff.
This one's kind of depressing for me. So everybody I think knows if you've watched, listened to this podcast, watched the podcast, listened to the podcast, I go through these random spells of not eating meat, mostly because of my microbiology class that freaked me out of parasites and all the things that could eat my brain. And I just, even if I'm not like vegetarian, I primarily go with like very low meat.
I get protein other ways. Unfortunately though, there's a recent UK study that has come out that shows that vegetarianism is associated with a higher risk of stroke than meat eating diet. I'm like, son of a gun.
Here we are trying to save the planet, or save my brain from anything brain eating, Swiss cheese my brain up. And now I'm just going to be at a higher risk for stroke anyway. So the study that was published in the British Medical Journal found that people who followed vegetarian or vegan diets had a 20% higher risk of having a stroke compared to those who ate meat.
Okay, 20% is like...
Yeah, but again, like that study, I have so many questions like, or what else could be like, is this causation or correlation?
Correct, which is kind of impossible to prove.
Because I feel like being vegetarian or vegan is actually more of a lifestyle than a diet thing for a lot of people.
It's more of a lifestyle than a diet. I just don't want my brain to be switched.
I think if you're a casual vegetarian, sure. But I feel like a lot of, I feel like there is a bit of lifestyle going on. I would actually believe it would be the other way.
I would think that most people who are vegetarians or vegans are probably really into health.
And I feel so much better when I eat a little amount of meat. And I actually have a coworker, because I kept saying it at work randomly, and then she started it, because she's at the age where she's like, I'm falling apart. She's had two surgeries this year, and I feel for her because she's just at the age where everything in your body, I don't know, you just wake up one day and decide to stop working.
And so she started not eating meat for the most part, cutting it down to very, very little. And she even said, she's like, I feel so much better.
And I'm like, heck yeah, like you definitely feel better. Maybe that's the solution. Maybe it's not nothing.
No meat, it's just like low.
It's just limit.
Yeah, because I mean, too, you think about like the food pyramid. We all learned at one point, like this is what you should eat. But then they're like, actually, no, like this is all wrong.
So what the study did, the researchers looked at 48,000 men and women living in Oxford following what they ate and whether they had heart disease or stroke over 18 years.
So this is like thorough study.
Exactly 48,000 48,188 men and women over 18 years, which is pretty big. The researchers group participants according to the diets meat eaters, fish eaters, and vegetarians. While vegan diets are quite different to vegetarian diets, investigators combine the two groups.
Yeah, that's a big difference.
Having no animal products versus having some animal products.
Yeah, I couldn't go vegan. I could not go vegan.
No cheese and eggs and stuff.
Yeah, nope. I love me some cheese. Although, again, cheese is another one.
Dairy is another one of those things. When I don't have it, I feel so much freaking better than when I do. So anyway, they found that vegetarians had a 22% lower risk of heart disease than meat eaters.
This is the equivalent of 10 fewer cases of heart disease per 1,000 vegetarians in meat eaters over 1,000 years. So we're at lower risk for heart disease.
Your heart does better, which, again, not surprised. That sounds expected to me because I would think that a lot of vegetarians are focused on health.
Which I have a heart condition. I have an arrhythmia, and maybe my doctor even says he's like, follow a strict Mediterranean diet. If you're going to do meat, eat fish.
That's going to be the best route for you. And I really do. When I actually do stick to it, I feel so much better.
Yet vegetarians had a 20% higher rate of stroke, equivalent to three more strokes per 1,000 vegetarians compared to meat eaters over 10 years. The decrease in heart disease risk seemed to be linked to lower BMI, cholesterol levels, and disease of diabetes and blood pressure. These benefits are all known to be associated with healthy vegetarian diet and are protective factors against heart disease.
The study showed fish eaters had a 13% lower risk of heart disease, but no significant increase in the rate of stroke when compared to meat eaters.
Oh, so go pescatarian.
So, I mean, it almost is like you get the benefit of both worlds, and I think it's because they, again, Mediterranean diet, like he said, like it go high in fish because like that gives you like the good, like the good of it where they're saying now...
Also, if you think about like where humans evolved, the fertile crescent there, like...
Yep.
That's...
it's legit. So anyway, the article goes on and on, but it's from the Knowridge Science Report. And again, it's from that nifty-difty app I have, the science one, the science news one.
I wonder why the stroke though for vegetarians. Like I wonder what the deal is. Like why?
I mean, you need protein. And honestly, like you can get protein, but unless you're very intentional...
Gotcha. Yeah, that maybe they just weren't getting enough of it. They tried.
Yeah, you do have to be intentional. And it's not just the protein. It's everything that comes with it.
You know what I mean? It's making sure that you get a balanced amount of everything, which, I mean, I would say most Americans... Yeah, it's hard for everybody.
And then when you withdraw something from your diet. So, vegetarian plus fish seems to be the way to go.
Yeah, I have some friends who went pescatarian for health reasons. I mean, I'll tell you what.
No, it's really not. I love fish. Texas, it's a little bit harder to get stuff, get fish, than what it ever was.
But I think I just have to maybe do a better job.
Which is crazy because the Gulf's right there.
Yeah, but I mean, you figure like a lot of the stuff in the Gulf isn't like...
Yeah.
Good. I think I just need to do a better job of like, because up north we have some amazing fish markets up there, especially in Pittsburgh. And I think just down here, I had to do a better job of looking around.
But after I read that, I was like, you know what? I really do have to kind of look around for a better, like a true fish market to go get some good stuff. So anyway, my nature news.
Awesome. Well, do you mind if I start us off?
Go for it.
Okay, cool. So I chose...
I know one of yours, and I'm mad because I picked it too. But I figured you would too, because I grew up hearing this one all the freaking time.
Okay, okay. So that's probably my first one, which is, is this the Pinker Red Sky at Night Sailor's Delight? Pink Red Sky in Morning Sailor Take Warning.
Yeah, my mom says this all the time.
All the time. And then I went to Ohio and nobody said it. So I don't know if it's like one of those weird PA things that like came from the coast into PA or what, but nobody ever said it in Ohio.
Maybe you just have to be closer to water. So for listeners again, it is either... I always heard Pink Sky at Night, but apparently the real saying is Red Sky at Night Sailor's Delight, Red Sky in Morning Sailor Take Warning.
So this saying, I had no idea. This saying has been around for at least 2,000 years because it's written in the book of Matthew in the New Testament. Wait, what?
How did I miss that?
How did I miss this?
I mean, I grew up in Methodist. I mean, I remember the Bible verse about pooping outside your camp. Yeah, no, this is in there too.
Man, I missed that.
So what would this be? Matthew chapter 16 verse 2 through 3, Jesus said, When in evening ye say, it will be fair weather, for the sky is red.
What version are you reading with ye in it?
Oh, I don't know. I just copied this. Ye say, when in evening ye say, it will be fair weather, for the sky is red.
And in the morning, it will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and lowering. So, okay.
Jesus is a scientist, who knew?
But, so we at least know that the saying has been around that long. Probably the saying or a version of it has been around for as long as people have had to be out on the water.
I mean, as I say, to be fair, he was a fisherman, I mean of men, but still, I mean, maybe.
He came from a fishing village and everything. So, so fishing, so weather is important to everyone. But it is especially important to farmers and sailors, both of whom like safety and livelihoods depend on weather.
So sailors especially came up with a lot of weather folklore so that they could literally stay alive. So what does this saying mean? Basically, it says if you see a pink or red sunset, the weather the next day is going to be good.
But if you see a pink or red sunrise, the bad weather is coming. So is it true or is it false? Do you know?
It's true to a caliber because it has something to do with the reflection off the water, right?
Yes, yes. So yes, it is partially, mostly true, but with certain caveats. The colors we see at sunrise and sunset are due to light reflecting off of water vapor and particles in the atmosphere.
And the thickest part of the atmosphere is the one closest to the ground. So at sunrise and sunset, the sun is shining through the thickest layer of the atmosphere. And that's why it looks red, because the more red the sky, that means there's more stuff in the atmosphere.
The science of that is that your eyes perceive light, and red and orange wavelengths, red and orange light, are the longest, so they can reach our eyes while the blues and the purples all get scattered by all the stuff in the atmosphere, and our eyes don't see them. So that's why the sun looks red at sunrise and sunset, because it's the only color that can make it that far to our eyeballs, through all the little ricocheting pieces.
So all this concentrated stuff in the atmosphere is due to high pressure, meaning that the atmosphere is pressing down. And high pressure equals good weather. So atmosphere pressing down is actually a good thing.
It means the clouds can't go up and make storm clouds. So high pressure. So where the high pressure is, is what this saying is telling you.
So red sunset means high and pressure air is in the west, and good weather follows. The red sunrise could indicate two things. Either there is high pressure in the east where the sun rises, meaning that high pressure may have moved on from the west, like maybe the good weather is already past you and the bad weather is coming in, or that there's lots of water vapor in the air, which is probably going to lead to rain.
So either way, either way, not a good thing to see like that in the east. But this saying only works if you live in the mid latitudes on planet Earth. So you can't live in the tropics.
The poor tropics, they have nothing going for them.
Well, you could use this, but you'd have to kind of flip-flop the sayings, kind of like how we talked about in our last episode, Seasons, how things are opposite. So if you look at a picture of Earth, there's wind all around Earth. If you live in the mid latitudes, which is where Katy and I live, and a lot of other listeners, basically the whole US is there, our weather, our winds are called westerlies, and weather is always coming from the west.
That's just where weather comes from for us. It's always west. If you look at a map, when we get storms, it's from the west almost always, unless it's like a hurricane and a freak thing.
If you're in the tropics, the trade winds come from the east. So remember what I said about the high pressure. So if bad weather comes in from the west, if you are seeing a sunset in the west, that means nice weather.
It means no bad weather is coming.
Did you just sound out the north, south, east, west in your head?
Oh, maybe.
You went like, north, south, east, west.
And then if you see the sun rise in the east and the high pressure is already over there, it means the good weather is already past you or that there's so much rain around. So it's true where we live. It's true.
It is not true in the tropics. You'd have to flip-flop it. You'd have to say something like, not the literal opposite, but you'd have to finagle the sentence.
OK, let's just pause here for a second. Could you imagine being the British explorers back in the day who are like, I got this crap down. And then they go down to Latin America, and they're like, oh, we're good.
We're good. And they think they're OK.
It's the exact opposite thing.
The exact opposite. They're like, what the heck?
They reach the Caribbean and are just not prepared, which would be terrible. So of course, there's always, you know, we're predicting weather without scientific instruments here. So of course, there's never 100% accuracy with a saying like this, but it's a pretty good bet.
And, you know, this is only going to predict weather for like, maybe the next 12 hours, okay? Weather is constantly moving. Like, just because you see a red sunset doesn't mean you're going to have, like, tomorrow night there won't be rain.
It probably just means tomorrow morning it won't be raining.
Yeah, it's not that far out of a predictor.
Yeah, this is short term. It's just enough to like, if you were a sailor, you might be able to like get back to shore before like stuff hits the fan. So, I mean, yeah, it's true enough.
And then for those of you in the tropics, if we do have any listeners who are not in the mid latitudes, we actually do. So please tell us if you have a saying that's like this, but in a different way. So yeah, pink sky at night, which is why I've always heard.
Pink at night, sailors delight. Pink in morning, sailor take warning. True.
I took a little bit of a different spin than what you did just because I found some things that were like fascinating. That was like, man, this is crazy. I got to focus on it.
Dive down the rabbit hole.
Right. So if our message is talking about a variety of folklore, trying to predict it, some of the folklore that we find out there, like what Laura was talking about, more like a proverb. Yeah, and that's more like that's still without your outside of your control.
I found one that is kind of like within human control in a way. Yep. So the first one that I'm going to focus on is about tornadoes and whirlwinds.
Now, there's not a lot of in-depth information about tornado mythology, but I did find one that I've never heard of, and it's called the Dagwonet, aka the flying head.
Whoa, that's terrifying.
Just go with me.
And it predicts, this is going to lead to predictions.
Kind of, based upon human behavior. So it's one of the things that like humans do something, this shows up.
So not predicting the weather, but predicting a weather phenomena. Oh, okay, no, no, I see what you're saying.
So as a refresher, for those who don't know, tornado is a narrow, violently rotating columnar area that extends from a thunderstorm to the ground. Because obviously, wind is invisible, it's hard to see tornado unless it forms a condensation funnel made up of water droplets, dust, and debris. Tornadoes can be among the most violent phenomenon of all atmospheric storms we experience, obviously hurricanes too.
What's interesting about tornadoes, and I never really put too much thought into it, but the US has by far the highest number of tornadoes around the world. Why? Our topography.
Flat Central US, aka Tornado Alley, and like Laura was talking about, the way that the air currents flow within the US literally makes Tornado Alley and just all of the US the perfect place for them to happen. And not just Tornado Alley, like I said, but all of the US, because anywhere from 1,000 to 1,400 tornadoes are recorded, whereas in Europe, only around 400 are recorded. So that's a significant difference.
So with that in mind, it is no wonder why most of the mythology or stories surrounding tornadoes primarily belongs to Native Americans. Now, a whirlwind though, which is what for the most part this focuses on, maybe, is a less powerful tornado, but stronger ones can still do a lot of damage. Oftentimes, whirlwinds are sometimes called dust devils, and they're typically earth-based, whereas tornado is sky-based.
However, because these stories are so old, and they're...
What were they really talking about?
Yeah, what were they really talking about? So there's some debate over like, well, we think it might just be a whirlwind. No, it's really like a small tornado.
And I mean, growing up in the Northeast, like, the tornadoes aren't nearly like what you see. Right, they're not as crazy. Yeah, as what we've seen in Tornado Alley, which can be insane.
All right, so the floating head stories, they originated in New York with a few different tribes. And according to them, tornadoes were actually the Daguananyet, aka flying head, who is the daughter of the wind spirit. She was said to take the form of a whirlwind or a tornado and the physical appearance of the flying head can vary between the different Native American tribes and who it's being passed down through.
However, it's generally described as resembling a human head with long dark hair, terrible eyes, and a large mouth filled with razor sharp teeth.
Yikes!
Yep, that's why I was like, you know what, I'm doing this one. Which, because that is terrifying, because you think about nowadays, we're pretty desensitized. So there's some really horrible things in general, but also in movies, things don't freak us out.
But can you imagine your brain and where it would go seeing this back in the day? Insanely terrifying.
Yeah, and the shrieking noise. I mean, it totally makes sense that it would be a woman. Right?
Right, right.
It sounds like it's screaming.
It does, it really does. So in some versions, too, depending, again, depending on which tribe you hear it from, the flying head also has a pair of bat wings coming out from each side of its cheek. So it's like, it just literally is a flying head with bat wings out of its cheek along with bird-like talons on the edge.
Yeah, almost. Other versions replace the bat wings with those of a bird. In every account, though, they're described as being bigger in size, like large in size, anywhere from ranging taller than a man to much, much larger than that, possessing a hide that no weapon can penetrate.
Which, I mean, tornado whirlwind, whichever one it is, a weapon like an arrow, a spear, obviously not going to do a whole lot. Also, that's pretty ballsy to be like, see this cut, then it's flying at you, and you're like, you know what, I'm going to go after it. Like, so anyway, some tribes would go ahead and describe it as a witch and believe that she, because they refer to it as a she, could not be killed.
Which, again, yes, of course. Anyone who angered her would be picked up and thrown many miles away. Also, fact.
So now, keep in mind, too, these stories are coming from New York, again, like I said, which would be smaller tornadoes and things of what we would see down in tornado alleys. So I can't even imagine. And I tried to look, and I didn't really find anything on, like, what does the Native Americans around here think that tornadoes were?
Because, like, they're so much bigger down here. So anyway, back to the flying head. She's always seen as fearsome, but could be called upon for aid in battle by anyone who knew the right song to sing to her.
So is either a good thing or a bad thing. Either you were given the gift that you could sing and bring her up and about, or it was a bad thing. Like, if you took certain actions, it would be bad.
So one of the bad things, there was a tale, listen, just hang in with me, folks. So there is an uncle.
Also caveat all of this, that this is, any tribes that do still exist, like, we recognize, like, this is culture, this is a cultural story.
Yeah, but this one too, though, has seemed to kind of fade away, I would say. Even though one of the tribes is, like, a Seneca tribe, it does seem to have faded over time, for sure. It's not like some of the other ones that we've talked about in previous episodes, because this one seems to have, like, gone away, which also has some environmental implications, because, like, especially in the New York area and things like that, like, there isn't as, like, sometimes there's as many, sometimes there's not as many just based upon the years and, you know, the frequency and everything.
Anyway.
So, the story goes, one of the many, many stories goes, that there was an uncle and a nephew that lived near, that lived near Dagwonet whenever she was, like, a a being. Um, because it's kind of like Greek mythology in which, like, at one point, like, humans and the, and whatever these entities are that they're talking about, like, kind of co-existed.
Gotcha.
Though the uncle forbids the nephew to visit her, he sneaks off frequently to visit her and her child. During his visits, Dagwonet ignores the nephew completely. Each time he plays with the child, he steals a piece of meat from her place.
When the child turns 15, he informs the visiting nephew that those two, so the dad or the uncle, when a child turns 15, he informs the nephew that they are actually cousins, that the nephew's uncle is really the child's father, the husband of Dagwinet. So I'm like, even back then in Native American stories, there's like drama. Like, yeah, because it's like, nope, you're actually cousins because I am the husband.
When the nephew returns home, again, the uncle questions him, the boy admits to visiting Dagwinet, stealing meat from the house and puncturing the bag of bear's oil that hangs above her head, which I'm assuming was a bad thing. I'm not sure. Again, I tried to look it up.
Like, I mean, but I would know like bear's oil obviously is don't come around by it, but I didn't find any like what the significance of that was. When the uncle grows angry and informs her that because the bag is now broken, they are in great danger. Soon, the woman becomes a whirlwind, destroys the uncle's lodge and carries him away.
So that's like where Dagwonet like takes off like this whole thing. The nephew goes to her house to ask his now that he knows as his cousin what happened to the man. The cousin doesn't know, but warns the nephew that she will come after him the next day.
So to escape her fury, the nephew hides in the belly of his guardian, a mole. She soon finds him and kills him, but mole is able to resuscitate him. Mole and the nephew then find the uncle under an elm tree, which is standing on his chest.
The nephew helps his uncle out from under the tree and then goes to her lodge and kills her by burning her body in a fire of bear oil, which I'm like, that's extreme. Yeah. So Dougmanet soon revives and goes after the nephew because again, she's a whirlwind at this point, a whirlwind at this point or a small tornado.
Like you can't stop it. He is able to escape and when she finally retreats back to her lodge, the nephew and uncle kill her again with fire. This time though, they remove her bones from the fire and pound them into a fine powder.
They divide the powder into three separate bags, one for the uncle, one for the nephew, and mole. They then decide whenever there is a storm outside, they must keep the bags apart so the powder can't unite and revive Daguanet. So basically, it was like as long as you keep these three things separate, it will just stay like a small whirlwind, but if you combine them, she's coming out and she's going to come after you kind of thing.
So in other stories though, the flying head drove the original native inhabitants who lived in the area, which again, state of New York, who lived in the Adirondack Mountains away from their hunting grounds before the Europeans even came. So again, stories spread that she's around, she's coming, and again, you can either call upon her to help you fight in a battle. This is after the whole uncle nephew thing, of course.
But you can either call upon her, or if you do certain things that she saw was unfavorable, then she is coming after you. And I read through several different stories where they were, I mean, several different stories where it was passed down from generation to generation, and things like basically if you went against what the tribe said or what they believed in, she's coming for you, and you better watch out because she's gonna grab you and chuck you. Which again, tornado, that would make sense if it was a tornado.
So in the early 19th century, a guide in the town of Lake Pleasant, New York, who called himself Captain Gill, claimed it was Lake Sacaganda, where the legend took place originally. The name of the previous inhabitants, whatever tribe that was, had been lost to history because they're not sure who it was because remember, she would drive people out from that area. Which also is true because if you look at paths of tornadoes especially, it'll keep hitting the same spots again and again for a few years in a row just because of the paths and it'll eventually change.
So it's not surprising that if it was a true tornado, that it would be going in the same place and they're like, you know what?
I'm out after like the second one or third.
I am done. So even though we don't know what tribe was originally living there, in this very specific spot, not just the generalized area, the history of the flying head ensured that every neighboring tribe steered clear from that area. Like, word traveled and nobody went there.
The flying head legend still survives today, but the name of the tribe who started the story originally is gone. The hill, though, however, where the unknown tribe's village was located is considered cursed. Three different hotels were built on the sacred site, and all three had a short lifespan and burned to the ground mysteriously.
Dang.
What the heck? So anyway, so that is dang when it and again, it's not so much predicting, but it's like you better do this or she's coming after you. Yeah, it seemed to prove true time and time again.
And even the land three times for hotels burned to the ground short lifespan oil burned to the ground, right? Coming after him again. Isn't that crazy?
Cool.
So anyway, I saw I read that story and I was like, this is actually kind of neat because I had never heard of that one at all.
Yeah, no, I've never either.
So so it is neat because I mean, again, can you imagine like being back in that time and you see something like a tornado and having no explanation whatsoever like anything that you've done bad, like I could have done something bad last week. And I'm like, surely it's because of that. You know what I mean?
Like because you just what else do you think it is? It's got to be punishment, especially something like a tornado. It's going to pick somebody up and chuck them.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it does seem personal. So anyway, so I thought that was pretty cool.
Yeah. Well, in not at all similar vein.
For once, for once, we're just like totally different.
Yeah, no, nothing like this. So you're talking about giant flying heads. I'm moving on to woolly bears.
something else that people believe could predict the weather is the legend of the woolly bear, which says that the longer the woolly bears black band, the longer and the colder the winter will be.
Listen, when I moved south there to Texas and I told somebody that, they're like, excuse me, what?
I was like, listen, I shouldn't be surprised. So for those of you that are like, wait, what are we talking about? What's a woolly bear?
A woolly bear is also known as a woolly worm. It's not a worm. It's not a bear.
It's a caterpillar. It is the caterpillar or the larva of an Isabella tiger moth. They can be found all over the United States, literally everywhere in the United States.
Northern Mexico, Southern Canada. People in Texas should know about woolly bears. They might just not call them that.
I don't think it's so much the woolly bears. I think that just because we don't have a harsh winter, we don't have such a harsh winter. There was never the story and the correlation between the two.
Whereas up north, it happens.
Gotcha. These caterpillars, for those of you not in the United States, you can look them up, but they do look wooly. They're covered in hairs.
It's very tempting to be touchable for a kid.
I definitely do touch them, and thankfully they're not one of those ones that make you real itchy, at least most people. Overall, they're black in color with a rust red band that goes around their middle, typically. It's not wool or really hair.
It's not true hair. It's more like bristles coming off of this caterpillar. And then they turn into these beautiful mobs after they hatch from cocoons.
But the legend has to do with them as a caterpillar. So the saying goes back to colonial times. Couldn't find any more information on it than that.
Like, it's been around. People have always, this is just something that people have always said. But it didn't really get famous, like that saying, this legend, didn't really get famous until a study was done in 1948.
And I say study, like, very loosely.
I'm excited to hear what this is.
This study is very loose because it was done by a guy in 1948 and he went to this place called Bear Mountain, which I do believe is in North Carolina. And he was like, I'm going to figure out if this is true. So he counted 15 woolly bears, or he measured 15 woolly bears.
Okay, that's not enough.
For those of you, I mean, most of you might not have to be scientists to know that 15 is not enough sample size to make any conclusions. But of the 15 he measured, it seemed to be so. And he was like, yes, this is a thing.
Also probably gave them their name woolly bear because of the whole bear mountain thing. Before that, they were probably just called woolly worms. So again, people would say, the longer the rusty red band, the harsher the winter.
So does this... Oh, and FYI, the guy who did the study, he started the original Society of the Friends of the Woolly Bear.
Of course he did.
I think there's still a thing that they do counts every year. So they actually started doing counts again to see...
Okay, so more than 15.
50 years later, they started doing counts again, or maybe not 50 years, maybe like 25 or 30 years. But anyway, since then, people have started doing more and more and more counts to see if there's any truth to this. And no, there's no...
You know there's somebody in that group that has a wooly bear tattoo.
And no, there's no truth to this. It is all coincidence. Ironically, the hairs on their body help them to freeze in the winter, not stay warm.
I don't think I would have guessed that.
No, me neither, because you're like... People are thinking the longer the band, they're going to be nice, warm, and toasty. No, no, no, no.
They freeze solid practically in the wintertime. And they're fine with that. And those hairs help them to freeze in a controlled manner.
So slowly enough...
I mean, if I were to freeze... Yeah, if I were to freeze, might as well do it in a controlled manner.
Yeah, so they freeze into little caterpillar popsicles over the wintertime. And like I said, they can live all over the United States and up into Canada. And sometimes they freeze for years.
Which is nuts. They figured it out. The number of brown...
The band. What's the deal with the band? The deal with the band is that the number of...
These caterpillars are kind of divided up into little segments. And when caterpillars grow up, they hatch from their egg and they start out really tiny, and then they get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. And to get bigger, they're an insect, they have to molt.
So they actually lose their skin.
I really don't know why I've never thought... Well, I mean, I do know why I never thought about this, because I have a thousand other things to think about.
So they molt, they get bigger. And each time they get bigger, they add some... They add just like almost like a rattlesnake.
It's the same thing. They're adding some segments. Those segments are brown, are the ones that they're adding.
So the more brown hairs has to do with age of the caterpillar. In other words, like, how late did it get started in the spring? Like, when did it hatch?
Did it get started really late and it's not very old now that it's fall? Because fall is the time that we really see woolly bears. They're on the move.
They're trying to find places to hibernate. So if you see a woolly bear with a really short band, it's not very old, which could mean a couple of...
Okay, go ahead, go ahead, because I was going to take a guess, but I'll let you continue.
Well, so there's two things that it could be. It's either that there was a really, like, there was a heavy winter leading to a late spring, or there was, like, lots of drought, and the poor thing didn't get enough to eat.
That's what I was going to say. I feel like it's more of a... It would have been a predictor of what just happened rather than what's to come.
That's exactly what the science says. So if you are looking... This is like a hindsight prediction, okay?
So not a prediction at all. This is, I don't remember what this past year was like. You see a woolly bear, oh yeah, it was a crap year.
Because it's just telling you what the last year was like. So the little guy can't predict the future, but he's really good at telling you, without words, how the year went.
Which I mean is what trees do, too. You know what I mean? Like tree rings and stuff.
Exactly, if you look at a tree ring, it's the same thing. So no, there is no validity to the woolly bear legend. But they are really cute.
And they're fine to pick up and let them go on their way, and they make really cool little cocoons. So yeah, woolly bears are awesome. I'm sure the original society of Friends of the Woolly Bear is a fun group.
But yeah, not true at all for predicting. Predicting, predicting the weather.
Alrighty, I'm going to go ahead, as I'm moving my chair, I'm going to stand in line with, again, just like general control of, you know, pissing off nature and seeing what happens. Because again, that's where like a lot of, at least from whenever I was like, that's where like a lot of the stories that I was finding was coming from is based upon human action, which I mean, again, Greek mythology, anything. And that's where this next one is coming from is Greek mythology.
If humans did something wrong, or if they did something good, I guess, which I guess, I mean, most of these stories just focus on the negative. But there was an outside entity that was controlling that or reacting to that. So you did something bad, something bad is going to be happening in the weather.
So the next one that I'm going to talk about are clouds, and the folklore surrounding clouds from ancient Greeks, cloud nymphs.
Man, they had nymphs for everything. They were absolutely convinced that, yeah, everything.
Nymphs, yeah, nymphs everywhere.
If only, yeah, they were like hot ladies everywhere.
Nymphs, gotta be. Just a group of dudes being like, nymphs gotta be everywhere. All right, so again, from the science perspective, a cloud is made of water drops or ice crystals floating in the sky.
There are many kinds of clouds. Clouds are, of course, an important part of Earth's weather. The sky can be full of water, but most of the time, you can't see the water.
Of course, the drops of water are too small to see. As the water vapor goes higher in the sky, the air gets cooler, of course. The cooler the air causes, water droplets start to stick to things like bits of dust, ice, sea salt, whatever.
Clouds. So that's clouds. All right.
Now here we go with butchering. Anything that is anything related to Greek mythology. Onward.
The Nephili were nymphs of clouds and rain. All right. Listen, this is a lot of Greek names.
I'm just calling it now. I'm going to butcher one right after the other. They rose up from oakeness and poured and carried water back up to the heavens and pictures made of clouds.
The Nephili are often, I'm going to say it different every time. Nephili are often depicted as being beautiful young women, as Laura said, pouring water from pictures, much like their sisters. The Nites, which were freshwater nymphs, were simply floating across the sky and billowing rose.
So you do something nice to entice it, rain, no rain, doing something wrong. Normally, they are depicted as being the youngest of the oakeneds, which is why many of them are part of the 60 nymph followers of Artemis. And I'm just, there's a bunch of other names and stuff that they go into that I'm just going to skip over.
So their parents on the stories are either oakeness, theites, or error. Okay, so there is a part of the story, though, that with the nymphs, the aculus, the bound they appeared before Atlas, which I used to remember the hierarchy of all these Greek mythologies, but I don't remember much of it anymore. But I know Atlas, he was the Titan of Endurance.
I do remember that one.
That's about it.
And that was his thing. That's what he did, was he was forced to hold up the sky or the world. However, later in the stories of Hermes, which is God and Zeus' messenger, warns them that they have to run away since Zeus has heard what was going on just in general about just insanity.
If you guys read anything, again, constant chaos. So he heard what was going on and was about to strike them with lightning for being sympathetic to Atlas. At first, they say they stay and suffer with Atlas, but after it began to thunder, they ran away.
Which is crazy that that is like what they say happens because thunder and clouds go pretty hand in hand.
They do. But I think it's like, again, it goes back to the Greek mythology of like, because you know how there's always that like give and take of this is like they, how can I put this? Like they want to, they want to hold up women as like, oh, hey, these are things like the nymphs.
Like that's the reason why so many of these nymphs are women, like beautiful young women, because they're like, oh, this is great. But at the same time, they're like, no, you know what I mean? So it's like, it's a given take of like, this is good, but it's also like no touchy touch kind of thing.
Okay, so they wanted, they stay with and suffer with Atlas. And I'm going to skip some of the section of the story because it goes into a little bit more violent stuff. But I will say some not so nice and, um, what can we say here?
They weren't given permission to take upon some sexual acts. And anyway, some bad stuff happened. There was trickery involved.
And so the punishment of it, occasionally in myths, the gods, usually Zeus, had them take the shape of other women. And so that's kind of why it was like the shape of other women. So it was like, do stuff bad, you're a nymph.
And so why? Don't know. So it was kind of like a punishment.
And that was in order to test or trick men. So it was almost like, here's this beautiful woman. Nope, teasing you.
Like, it's actually like this guy that did a bunch of horrible bad things. So in one instance, for instance, they had them look like a female god, and they attempted to, again, do some horrible stuff. So to test everybody, the cloud nymphs would lay beside them.
And when he wrote to see her, he bragged that he had slept with Hera, which again, as punishment to look like her. Yes. Yes.
As punishment, Zeus turned him into a wheel, and he in the winds blew him through the clouds. Another account says that one of the Nephili took the shape of Helen so that Hermes could take her away from Paris and bring her Egypt while Paris went to Troy with the Nephili.
So anyway, they were like involved in the whole war at Troy. Yes. Sounds like they were like kind of not nice ladies.
No. And if you think about that, though, that does make sense because typically, like, yes, there are nice cloudy, you know, beautiful cloudy days, which gives you like the appearance of like a woman.
Oh, these are nice.
Yeah, these are nice. But on the flip side, if it is like the whole trickery, it is a trickery because it's like clouds are great, but then they also bring a lot of death, destruction, other things, which is why a lot of people believe there was that flip, which like anything else with Greek mythology, can it ever be a simple, straightforward story? No, because somebody's got to be somebody's got to be doing something with someone to punish somebody else.
And it's always just like way too complicated. But anyway, there are other peoples around the world that took a much more forward approach to it about like just clouds in general. So in ancient Hindu traditions, they said, is saying that elephants brought the rain, and that clouds themselves were the celestial relatives of white elephants that roamed the earth.
An elephant's body that thought that was thought to be representative of a cloud, and they would use their trunks to shower the earth with rain. So it was almost like a good a good omen thing. Yeah.
Native Americans also created folklore around clouds. According to one Pawnee tribe, who lived in Nebraska, clouds were the clothing of the gods of heaven. God spreading his arms would cause the clouds to stretch across the entire sky, and early Navajo people believed that clouds were formed when the great white swan flapped its wings.
So a little bit more of a positive spin than the ancient Greeks, which tends to be a running theme. Even today, cloud myths endure the Pueblo of Southwest America worship cloud people, which are supernatural beings from the underworld who bring rain and moisture to the earth. Again, it's a good thing.
They see it as clouds, rains, this is a good thing, whereas the ancient Greeks were like, it can be a good thing or it can be a really bad thing.
I feel like that tracks though too, because I feel like if you live on an island, rain is serious, I mean, it's serious, it's probably really bad storms.
Right? So, also with the Pueblo tribe, the cloud people are the spirits of the deceased who lived a good life, thereby taking on the form of clouds in the afterlife. By properly honoring the dead, the Pueblo, which is primarily like they were agriculture, planting, believe that cloud people would grant them rain, thereby nourishing their land, if they like paid homage and paid respect to their ancient relatives.
That's cool.
So anyway, so yeah, just a variety of stories about clouds all around, which I mean, again, makes sense. You see clouds every single day. Like, why would there not be like, bunches of stories surrounding them?
Yeah, for all of them. It's just, it was interesting. Again, ancient Greeks are, there's a lot of stories, just complex people, like just too many folks.
I feel like this is like, in the south, when I moved to the south and everybody will say someone else like, oh yeah, like, did you know, or they don't even say, do you know? It's like, oh yeah, the dock down the road. And you're like, I don't know who that is.
I feel like every ancient Greek story is that way. Like, they just expect you to, expect you to know, like, all 300,000 people. And you're like, I don't know who that is.
But thank you for telling me. So anyway, so I just thought that was interesting. Again, it all depends on like, depends on the people, depends on your actions as a human.
If it's, if you do good things, you bring, like you, you know, pay homage to your ancestors, rain, good things will happen. If you do bad things, no, it's a trick. The clouds are actually bad and they're going to bring a lot of death and destruction.
So yeah, I like how we took different directions. Like mine are like weather proverbs and yours is weather mythology and like weather folklore kind of encompasses both of them.
Yeah, I also, I mean, I just saw read the floating head story and I was like, I'm running with that because that sounds crazy cool. Alrighty guys, so that's weather. That's it.
Laura, did you have any last thoughts?
Nope. That's it. Join in next time.
I know we've got, I guess this is episode five, so we're not quite halfway. I'm pretty sure this is five, so we're not quite halfway. So keep listening because we've got lots more cool stuff, more guest speakers.
Good stuff coming down the pipe. Yep.
Alright. Talk to everybody next week then.