I always enjoyed watching the spring clouds ripping across the sky as my homemade kite of newspaper, mucilage, and privet sticks, struggled to get out of my hand and into the wind. Minutes later there could be a spring shower from a cloud just passing by to rain on your parade.
In summer, big puffy, slow moving clouds formed shapes; bears, clown faces, even rabbits. Shapes shifted by invisible wind not touching earth, but high up tickling clouds into whatever you could imagine in your limited mental vocabulary of shapes.
Fall clouds are fickle. They spring up overnight and promise a cloudy day, but melt with the winds that are created by the heat of the sun above them. As evening comes clouds reappear as the air cools. They are lazy, taking day after day of Indian Summer to prepare for the tempest to come...the dreaded winter.
The leaden sky of winter aren't clouds to me. I's a silent envelope keep silent watch, hovering above brown, gray and white watching for signs of spring, determined to drive it away.
Grandma Rachel always referred to the battle of winter to spring as "the storms of the equinox". An apt analogy, if you pay attention.
There was a camp song we sang when at Boy Scout camp that went
Ain't gonna' rain no more, no more,
Ain't gonna' rain no more
How in the world do the old folks know
It ain't gonna rain no more.
Like all of us, everyone asked the "old ones" what the weather would bring. The Old Farmers Almanac came out every year and was a guide based on passed daily observation made and recorded by farmers, woodmen and the like as to weather patterns in there daily lives. They and lived season after season in a more rural setting than we moderns live in. Our main worries are violent storms that can be predicted by satellites, Doppler Radar and boots on the ground.
The timing of the Battle of the Bulge was dependent on weather conditions gathered "modern" methods; weather balloons Equipped with instrument packages which radioed results, coded messages from informant in many locations. It wasn't looking great, but good enough to go with.
The destruction of the Spanish Armada, and the two attempts by China to invade Japan are examples of weather gone awry.
An old farmer was convinced by his son to buy a hay baler after years of putting up hay with horses and manpower. Half way through the process, the baler stopped tying. An afternoon "cloud" began to form. His son frantically worked to fix the baler. The father said "Ya know son, sometimes the solution to the problem is more complex than the problem itself. I'm just trying to get the hay in, not learn how to fix a baling machine."
Those going West in wagon trains leaving St. Louis knew not the challenges weather might play in the success or failure of there journey. They entered the endless prairies to a whole new set of challenging weather related issues. Tornado, wild fires driven by high winds started by dry lightning, dry water holes, early, and late snow falls were not in there experience. A savvy Wagon Master and a good crew were necessary to help navigate an already dangerous undertaking. There was safety in numbers...but a few good frontiersmen with experience won the day for many a westward journey.
Speaking of journeys. I've always wondered how it was Columbus was lucky enough to cross the Atlantic to the Americas in hurricane season more than once. Just lucky I guess. Our history might be different?
I still watch for lenticular clouds or thunder heads, mares tails, butter milk sky, red sky at night, sailor's delight, yet the weather brings surprises after 20 years on the farm.
Nothing like watching clouds gather the red and pink of a sun gone down over the horizon giving your world a beautiful pink hue turning to purple and finally giving up to the first star.
Ask a child to look up at the clouds and tell you what they see! You might be surprised at what they see.
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