For centuries our ancestors predicted the weather by looking at the sky, or by watching closely the behaviour of animals and birds. They handed down their wisdom through the generations in the form of popular sayings, known in the English-speaking world as weather lore. But the practice is common in almost every culture, and that of Germany is no exception. They call it Bauernregeln - literally, the "peasant rules".
Many Bauernregeln sound familiar. For example:
Red sky at night, the shepherd's delight;
Red sky in the morning, the shepherd's warning, has its Teutonic echo in
Abendrot', Gutwetterbot',
Morgenrot mit Regen droht.
Also a familiar concept is:
Siehst du die Schwalben
niedrig fliegen,
wirst du die Regenwetter
kriegen;
Fliegen die Schwalben in der
Hoeh'n,
kommt ein Wetter das ist
schoen.
"If you see the swallows swooping low," it tells us, "rain is on the way, but fine weather can be expected when they fly high in the sky."
There is also an English rhyme, I believe, to correspond to this interpretation of the behaviour of the farmyard cockerel. Kraeht der Hahn auf dem Mist,
aendert sich das Wetter;
kraeht der Hahn auf dem
Huehnerhaus,
haelt das Wetter die Woche
aus.
"When the cock crows on the dunghill the weather will change, but when he crows on the henhouse, the weather will hold for the remainder of the week."
Some sayings have a subtle logic to them, as in the case of "Rain before seven, dry by eleven"; it recognises the fact that most bands of frontal rain have a duration of only a few hours. The cautious Germans, however, allow a little longer:
Alle
boesen Wetter klaren gegen Abend - "All bad weather clears before evening."
Good meteorology is also to be found in Eine kleine Wolke am Morgen macht oft ein grosses Abendgewitter - "a small cloud in the morning often grows into an evening thunderstorm." But sometimes the science is turned back to front, as in Reif und Tau machen den Himmel blau. "Hoar frost and dew make the sky blue," it says, but as we know, it is the other way around: clear skies at night play a part in the formation of them both.
The potential sign most dreaded here in Germany, where the heat wave still continues, is
Blaest im August der Nord,
Dauert das Gute Wetter fort.
It says that a wind blowing from the north in August will cause the "good" weather to continue. But how one might adapt that to the current Irish August weather, I really do not know.