We are all interested students of the weather, but the naturalist
studies it for some insight into the laws which govern it. One season I
made my reputation as a weather prophet by predicting on the first day
of December a very severe winter. It was an easy guess. I saw in Detroit
a bird from the far north, a bird I had never before seen, the Bohemian
waxwing, or chatterer. It breeds above the Arctic Circle and is common
to both hemispheres. I said, When the Arctic birds come down, be sure
there is a cold wave behind them. And so it proved.
When the birds fail to give one a hint of the probable character of the
coming winter, what reliable signs remain? These remain: When December
is marked by sudden and violent extremes of heat and cold, the winter
will be broken; the cold will not hold. I have said elsewhere that the
hum of the bee in December is the requiem of winter. But when the season
is very evenly spaced, the cold slowly and steadily increasing through
November and December, no hurry, no violence, then be prepared for a
snug winter.
As to wet and dry summers, one can always be guided by the rainfall on
the Pacific coast; a shortage on the western coast means an excess on
the eastern. For four or five years past California has been short of
its rainfall; so much so that quite general alarm is felt over the
gradual shrinkage of their stored-up supplies, the dams and reservoirs;
and during the summer seasons the parts of New England and New York with
which I am acquainted have had very wet seasons--floods in midsummer,
and full springs and wells at all times. The droughts have been
temporary and local.
We say, "As fickle as the weather," but the meteorological laws are
pretty well defined. All signs fail in a drought, and all signs fail in
a wet season. At one time the south wind brings no rain, at another time
the north and northwest winds do bring rain. The complex of conditions
over a continental area of rivers and lakes and mountain-chains is too
vast for us to decipher; it inheres in the nature of things. It is one
of the potencies and possibilities which matter possesses. We can take
no step beyond that.