Prairie Bluestem: Rainy Days

Friday, September 25, 2009

Rainy Days

Extended equinox storm

We haven't had floods in the Hopkinsville area, but it has rained every day for the last week or more. When it isn't raining, the sky stays gray. Temperatures have been in the 80s, and the humidity has been very high.

Next Monday, according to the weather forecast, the skies will clear. Our daytime temps will drop to the 70s and night temps will drop into the 40s. It will begin to feel like fall.

I suppose this spate of rain is an equinox storm or as it was called in older times, a "line storm". According to Bulfinch's Mythology, the cooler weather that's coming after the line storm is a signal of a cool winter that will last until the next equinox.

1063. If the fall “line storm” clears off warm, it signifies that storms through that fall and winter will clear away with mild weather, i. e., the way in which the storm closes at the autumnal equinox will rule the weather following storms until the vernal equinox storm. Then the same saying applies to the “line-storm” of March, and the spring and summer after storms is foretold.

The contrary would happen if cool weather followed the line storm.

(Source: Bulfinch's Mythology)

However, an 1887 study of Weather Charts and Storm Warnings by UCLA scientists found little indication of an unusual concentration of storms at the autumnal equinox. They observed an increase of storms shortly after the equinox, followed by a period of mostly clear weather that lasted through "Martinmas summer" (the first couple weeks of November.)