"If a circle forms ‘round the moon,‘twill rain soon."
Ask any woman, and she’ll tell you that humidity is hair’s worst enemy. If she attempts to do something special with her hair on a hot, muggy day – such as curl it, if it’s straight – then she’ll end up with nothing more than a drooping mess in very short order. If, on the other hand, she has curly hair, then she’ll be left with a lot of frizzy curls that make her look like Orphan Annie on a bad day. Why? Simply because human hair expands as the humidity rises, which directly affects the manageability of the hair. Of course, when the humidity climbs, this indicates impending rain, so having a bad hair day during the summer months often means that a storm is brewing, such as is suggested in this saying:
"I know ladies by the score, whose hair foretells the storm; long before it begins to pour, their curls take a drooping form."
Since dust particles, ice crystals or some other form of small airborne element is needed in order for raindrops to form, the more of these elements there are in the air, the more likely it is that a rain storm will develop. This is due to the fact that without the presence of these tiny particles, the rain has nothing to encompass in order to form raindrops. When the conditions are right and moonlight passes through these moisture-soaked particles, then it appears to take on a reddish tone. When these are not present, and the sky is clear, then the moon is white in appearance. This bit of lore reflects those conditions:
"Pale moon rains; red moon blows; white moon neither rains nor snows."
If you happen to be one of those folks who take notice of a kind of tangy scent to the air just before a rain storm, what you actually smell is the ozone in the atmosphere. Due to the high voltage that exists within thunder clouds (even if thunder doesn’t appear to be present), a downdraft is created, which pushes the ozone toward the ground, causing the smell of what we translate as impending rain. Although some people are unable to perceive this particular scent, most folks find it to be a fairly obvious fragrance.
A Bit about Air Pressure
One of the ways in which meteorologists are able to foretell the weather is by watching the air pressure. Since this, coupled with wind, is a critical element in determining what the weather will be like on a given day (or night), the ability to forecast weather conditions is directly impacted by the combination of these two elements working together to form a specific weather pattern.
Fishermen and the Weather
Fishermen always keep an eye on the weather, in order to avoid mishaps – and also to determine when the fishing might be particularly good on a given day. For many generations, those who harvest their bounties from the sea have relied on certain signs to signify the conditions that can be expected, and things are no different today. While we now have sophisticated weather tracking equipment that will do the work for us, some folks continue to rely on the old standards which are expressed through folklore. Some examples of this would be:
"When the wind is in the north, the skillful fisher goes not forth; when the wind is in the east, ‘tis good for neither man nor beast; when the wind is in the south, it blows the flies in the fish’s mouth; but when the wind is in the west, there it is the very best."