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Weather lore


Weather lore is the body of informal folklore related to the prediction of the weather.

It has been a human desire for millennia to make accurate weather predictions. Oral and written history is full of rhymes, anecdotes, and adages meant to guide the uncertain in determining whether the next day will bring fair or foul weather. For the farmer wanting to plant crops, for the merchant about to send ships on trade, foreknowledge of tomorrow's circumstances might mean the difference between success and failure. Prior to the invention of the mercury barometer, it was very difficult to gather numerical data of any predictive value. Even though there were devices such as the weather stick which gave some indication of moisture changes, the only instrument of any reliability was human experience.

It is in Earth's middle latitudes, between roughly 30° to 60° North and South, that a significant portion of "weather" can be said to happen, that is, where meteorological phenomena do not persist over the long term, and where it may be warm, sunny, and calm one day, and cold, overcast and stormy the next.

A great percentage of the world's population lives in the equatorial regions, but for the most part, these regions do not experience weather as it is understood by this definition. The Sahara Desert in northern Africa, for instance, is almost uniformly hot, sunny and dry all year long especially due to the non-stop presence of high atmospheric pressure aloft, whereas weather trends on the Indian subcontinent and in the western Pacific, for instance, the monsoonal belt, occur gradually over the very long term, and the diurnal weather patterns remain constant.


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