A new discussion thread in Agriculture Online centers on the question of whether farmers pay any attention to the phase of the moon anymore. Some farmers do apparently, or at least they remember that their fathers and grandfathers had their eye on the zodiac when they performed chores like planting crops or handling livestock.
The discussion made me think too about the weather proverbs that you hear from time to time. Things like, "Red sky at morning: Sailor take warning. Red sky at night, sailor's delight."
Digging around on Agriculture Online, I found a story from a few years back, Weather folklore 'simply dangerous. ' The story debunks a number of myths about tornados, one being that you can outrun a twister with your vehicle. Oh, and you better not believe the old saw that lightning never strikes the same place twice, Kansas State University experts tell us.
I'm getting ready to head through the tornado alleys of Nebraska and Kansas in the next couple weeks, so guess I'll take this warning to heart.
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My friend, Roy Smith, Nebraska farmer and long-time markets analyst for Agriculture Online sent me this note this morning:
When you are driving through Nebraska stop by and I will show you scars from numerous lightening strikes in a small area over a period of a few years. It seems like we can expect a strike on my farmstead about once every five years or so.
Conversely, there has never been a hail storm on my farm since 1926 when my dad moved here. The theory is that hail storms avoid the Missouri River. In over 30 years of renting a lot of land in this area, I had one hail storm one year on one farm. It was about a half mile wide on a 200 acre farm, so the damage was very limited.
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