Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

Weather By The Moon
his possession an early German nautical almanac. Along
with the almanac’s calendar of movements of the planets,
stars and Moon, were contained instructions about the
weather, such as Moon’s halo precedes rain or snow, high
tides meaning storms at sea, and Northern lights heralding
cold weather .
Only priests, astrologers, and men of authority had
access to these ancient texts - the accumulated wisdom of
millenia of Persian, Greek, Islamic and European science.
The almanacs also listed future lunar eclipses. When a Jamaican
chief threatened to withhold the food supply to
Columbus’s hungry and mutinous crew in 1504, the resourceful
navigator threatened to remove the Moon permanently.
It was the early evening of 1st March and an
imminent total lunar eclipse; a fact known only to
Columbus. As the Moon started to disappear, the frightened
chief, overawed by the mariner’s apparent mighty
powers, relented. The Moon, within the hour then reappeared.
They had no further trouble with their food supplies!
Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison and John Quincy Adams all kept
daily weather records, in order to devise some patterns for
predictions.
Since biblical days, it has been known that particular
months bring particular winds.
‘
Out of the south cometh the whirlwind – Book of Job.
‘When ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be
heat; and it cometh to pass’ -St. Luke.
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