How accurate are weather proverbs?
Today we have generally replaced weather story-telling, cautionary tales, and proverbs with easily retrievable, digitally recorded data. However, for many of us the appeal of a story or a proverb is compelling and more likely to be remembered. Take for example the proverb Flowers smell best just before a rain. This has a scientific basis because scents are more easily detected in moist air, and moist air very often foretells rain. 24. When was weather forecasting first based on real data? As early as 900 BC Babylonians recorded wind directions; and in the 500s BC the Greeks recorded rainfall. In Oxford, England, William Merle kept weather records from 1337-1344. All data until the mid 1900s were from field observations or weather balloons. The idea that weather forecasting could be achieved by formulating equations of atmospheric motion emerged in 1922 but was not successfully implemented until 1950. Numerical weather prediction using computers to do the immense calculations is now sta
