The Daring Book for Girls - Andrea J. Buchanan [31]
“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning”
The various colors of the sky are created by rays of sunlight that are split into colors of the spectrum as they bounce off water vapor and dust particles in our atmosphere. When the atmosphere is filled with lots of dust and moisture, the sunlight coming through it makes the sky appear reddish. This high concentration of particles usually indicates high pressure and stable air coming in from the west, and since weather systems usually move from west to east, that means you’ll have good weather for the night. When the sun rises in the eastern sky looking red, that indicates a high water and dust content in the atmosphere, which basically means that a storm system may be moving in your direction. So if you notice a red sky in the morning, pack your umbrella.
“Ring around the moon, rain or snow soon.”
You may have noticed some nights it looks like there’s a ring around the moon. That halo, which can also form around the sun, is a layer of cirrus clouds composed of ice crystals that reflect the moon’s light like prisms. This layer of clouds are not rain or snow-producing clouds, but they sometimes show up as a warm front and low pressure area approaches, which can mean inclement weather. The brighter the ring, the greater the chance of rain or snow.
“Clear moon, frost soon.”
When the moon sits in a clear, cloudless sky, lore has it that frost is on its way. The weather science behind the saying explains that in a clear atmosphere, with no clouds to keep the heat on earth from radiating into space, a low-temperature night without wind encourages the formation of frost. When clouds cover the sky, they act as a blanket, keeping in the sun’s heat absorbed by the earth during the day.
“A year of snow, a year of plenty.”
This one seems a bit counter-intuitive, but in fact a season of continuous snow is better for farmland and trees than a season of alternating warm and cold weather. When there’s snow throughout the winter, that delays the blossoming of trees until the cold season is fully over. Otherwise, the alternate thawing and freezing that can come with less stable winter weather destroys fruit-bearing trees and winter grains.
“Rainbow in the morning gives you fair warning.”
Rainbows always appear in the part of the sky opposite the sun. Most weather systems move from west to east, so a rainbow in the western sky, which would occur in the morning, signifies rain—it’s giving you “fair warning” about the rainstorm that may follow. (A rainbow in the eastern sky, conversely, tells you that the rain has already passed.)
CLOUDS
THE TERMS for categorizing clouds were developed by Luke Howard, a London pharmacist and amateur meteorologist, in the early 1800s. Before this, clouds were merely described by how they appeared to the viewer: gray, puffy, fleece, towers and castles, white, dark. Shortly before Howard came up with his cloud names, a few other weather scientists started devising cloud terminology of their own. But it was ultimately Howard’s names, based on Latin descriptive terms, that stuck.
Howard named three main types of clouds: cumulus, stratus, and cirrus. Clouds that carried precipitation he called “nimbus,” the Latin word for rain.
Cumulus is Latin for “heap” or “pile,” so it makes sense that cumulus clouds are recognizable by their puffy cotton-ball-like appearance. These types of clouds are formed when warm and moist air is pushed upward, and their size depends on the force of that upward movement and the amount of water in the air. Cumulus clouds that are full of rain are called cumulonimbus.
Stratus clouds are named for their layered, flat, stretched-out appearance, as “stratus” is the Latin word for layer. These clouds can look like a huge blanket across the sky.
Cirrus clouds are named for their wispy, feathery look. “Cirrus” means “curl of hair,” and looking at cirrus clouds