What a fascinating subject Bunny. From my experience much of the folk lore associated with weather is true provided it is within a certain area. Local weather conditions need to be "learned" and usually what applies to one area of the country doesn't neccessarily apply in another area. For instance, I can tell when rain is expected by looking over towards the West. When the high ground to the West either goes misty or, in the worst case, disappears in a mist then I know rain will come within a couple of hours. That is because I have been watching and noting what happens when this takes place. Some of the other stuff is scientifically based, for example "Red Sky at Night ...." is based on the amount of moisture in the upper atmosphere and the way red part of the visible light spectrum is dissipated. My mother always used to say "Rain before Seven, Fine by Eleven" and, most times it is right. A depression moving West to East will usually take several hours to clear an area. If it is raining at, say six o'clock in the morning, then by eleven, five hours later, it should have moved on and clearer weather will follow. My mother used to get things wrong however by misjudging the whole situation. On a number of occasions she, and my father, would get ready to go to Skegness, which is to the East of where we lived. If it was raining at home at six she would say something along the lines of, "It's OK because by eleven it will have cleared". What she ignored and could never understand was that the rain was moving East. They would set off to Skeggy and the rain would follow them so when it was raining at eleven in Skegness when they arrived she was really put out. The fact that it
wasn't raining at Skegness at six in the morning never entered her equation. When I told her they would have been better going to Blackpool, for instance, it didn't improve her mood one bit.
If you look at most of these sayings you'll find some truth in many of them. I don't know about Magpies and becoming pregnant though. There are so many Magpies around these days that it would be like a massive maternity ward where I live if some of the sayings were right. Having said that I do notice that many of the female presenters on TV are pregnant so maybe it is the Magpie syndrome after all.
Old wives tales??
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