Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

FIRST QUARTER
Weather By The Moon
The 1 st Quarter Moon is the Moon you see in daylight
in the afternoon. Its glare (nearly 4 times fainter than
that of the Full Moon, surprisingly) is in the sky in the
evening, but if you wait up till about midnight it will be
seen then to set.
Typical of the 1 st Quarter could be cloud or rain (if
about) before lunch, with clearer skies from lunchtime to
midnight. In an overhead view the Moon would be to the
right of Earth, and forming a Moon-Earth-Sun right-angle.
Because the Moon is sitting on our orbital path around the
sun, three and a half hours ago the Earth was where the
Moon now is.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the 1 st Quarter appears,
when viewed from ground-level on Earth, as a D shape, but
is reversed ‘down under’ in the Southern Hemisphere because
viewers are viewing it moving in the opposite direction.
Writing from the Southern Hemisphere, the little reminder
I use is that when the Moon is approaching Full it is
Coming and I think of the C shape. When it is on the other
side of Full and approaching New it is Departing and I think
of the D shape. As it is the reverse in the Northern Hemisphere,
I would suggest readers there adopt expanDing and
Collapsing. A few days later in the month, more than half
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