28 Old Sayings About Rain and Weather (Do They Work?)

Weather wisdom from the pioneer days and earlier can be surprisingly accurate. Take a look at what I’ve learned from my own observations.

Old Sayings About Rain and Weather

Some of the most common old-time weather sayings, passed down from pioneer days:

• “February thunder brings a May frost”
• “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailor’s take warning”
• “When sheep collect and huddle, tomorrow will become a puddle”
• “If a fowl roll in the sand, rain is at hand”
• “If the wind be hushed with sudden heat, expect heavy rain”
• “When spiderwebs are wet with dew that soon dries, expect a fine day”
• “There’ll be one snow in the coming winter for every fog in August”

Some of these hold up better than others. The red sky saying has real evidence in meteorology — it reflects how weather systems typically move west to east. Others, like the fog-counting sayings, are folklore without scientific backing, even when they occasionally line up with what actually happens.

Learning about old-time weather wisdom

When I was getting ready to plant my spring garden this year, I was a little hesitant to plant according to the frost date. In February, I had seen a local farmer post on Facebook something that sounded to me like pioneer weather wisdom:

February thunder brings a May frost.

It sounded like something out of the Farmer’s Almanac. We had a thunderstorm on February 2 this year, and while our last frost date is usually around Mother’s Day (May 8), we had a frost on May 16. That frost damaged several crops in the area, and I was glad I had seen that farmer’s post and waited to plant in my garden.

Severe spring weather also impacts when I plant, prune, and propagate because that type of weather can be destructive.

I saw another saying come true this year as well, from farmers who had to wait until after the frost and then had a second delay in planting due to rain. When most finally got around to planting, they noticed that at the same time, there was a lot of white stuff floating around in the air.

When cottonwood starts to fly, it’s time to plant corn.

I began noticing other signs in nature, such as, June Bugs were only seen from our porch when it was a warm night. It had to be even warmer for the frogs to show up. I wondered if it might not be a good idea to wait for them to show up at least three nights in a row before trusting my plants to stay outside all night.

Hmmm….maybe these farmers and the pioneers before them were on to something.

Seeing these sayings come true before my eyes made me wonder what other old farming wisdom was out there from pioneer days and even earlier in history.

I decided to explore three different books of old-time weather wisdom from colonial days through pioneer days:

• A Millennium Primer: Timeless Truths and Delightful Diversions
• Ben Franklin’s Almanac of Wit, Wisdom, and Practical Advice
• The Old Farmer’s Almanac

Pioneer Wisdom for Planting and Weather

People have been planting long before there were apps or the internet to tell you when, where, and how to plant in a garden. Planting was done by carefully watching signs in nature, including the weather and using the moon for planning a garden. Over time, people noticed patterns for what worked and what didn’t. Those observations, in turn, became catchy sayings that could easily be taught to future generations.

Many folklore sayings don’t have much to back them up scientifically, but then there are others like the two I saw that do show themselves true in nature, at least sometimes.

Knowing some folklore regarding weather and planting is useful in case of a long-term power or internet outage. After all, a calendar last-frost date could be hard to figure out if you’ve lost track of what day it is exactly.

Or, by paying attention to nature, you might be able to avoid a late frost like I did this year. Consider, too, that even with all of today’s technology, weather forecasts are not 100% accurate. Nature has its ways of predicting the weather, too.

Besides the internet, one of the best sources to find folklore sayings is to get the Old Farmer’s Almanac or one of the books their editors publish. I picked a few up at my local library to look through. Because I liked what I saw so much, I promptly put them on my list of books to buy for my reference shelf.

A Millennium Primer: Timeless Truths and Delightful Diversions

A Millennium Primer, by The Old Farmer’s Almanac editors and Tim Clark, was written as a “summary” of the Old Farmer’s Almanacs from 1792 to 1999. The editor wanted it to be like a “suitcase you’ve packed for your journey into the next millennium.” It’s broken down into seven sections covering the human connection, health and food, self-reliance, animals, the sky, time and space, and prediction, in addition to pioneer weather wisdom.

Here are some of the old sayings I found in the book — some interesting, some accurate, and some never proven to be true!

• “When sheep collect and huddle, tomorrow will become a puddle.”
• “St. Swithin’s Day (July 15) if thou dost rain, for 40 days it will remain.” (Not proven to be true.)
• “Bats flying late in the evening foretell a fine next day.”
• “Cows give more milk and the sea more fish when the wind’s from the west.”
• “If a fowl roll in the sand, rain is at hand.”
• “There’ll be one snow in the coming winter for every fog in August.”

The book also gives advice on using insects as thermometers. For example, grasshoppers are loudest at 95°F but can’t make noise below 62ºF. If you hear a house cricket, count how many times he chirps in 14 seconds. Then, add 40º to arrive at the temperature where the cricket is.

Also, ants don’t emerge from their dens unless it is 55ºF or above. Bees cluster outside their hive at 102ºF and inside at 57ºF. And no noise from insects means it is 40ºF or below.

There are also tips on predicting the weather by the moon. Turns out, researchers are finding there is a correlation between the full moon, cloudiness, rainfall, and thunderstorms. The full moon can raise the temperature of the lower four miles of the Earth’s atmosphere by a few hundredths of a degree – enough to affect the weather.

Ben Franklin’s Almanac of Wit, Wisdom, and Practical Advice

The second book I found at the library was Ben Franklin’s Almanac of Wit, Wisdom, and Practical Advice by The Old Farmer’s Almanac editors.

Before the Old Farmer’s Almanac, there was Poor Richard’s Almanac, published by Ben Franklin from 1733-1758. It contains tables, weather predictions, and whatever wisdom Franklin wanted to include. This book contains selections from his almanacs and information on Franklin’s life.

Here are some of the more interesting folklore sayings I found in this book:

• ”For every thunderstorm in February will be a cold spell in May.” (This is the one my farmer friend had heard!)
• “If grass grows in January, it will grow badly the whole year.”
• “When oak trees bend with snow in January, good crops my be expected.”
• “When the cat in February lies in the sun, she will creep behind the stove again in March.”
• “April snow breeds grass.”
• “Old-timers in the upland South believe that frost will not occur after the dogwoods bloom.”
• “If the ash leafs out before the oak, expect a wet season.”
• “Frogs singing at dusk indicate fair weather to come.”
• “Mist in May and heat in June makes the harvest right soon.”
• “There will be as many frosts in June as there are fogs in February.”
• “When hornets build their nests high, expect a hot summer.”
• “Wet June, dry September.”
• “If the wind be hushed with sudden heat, expect heavy rain.”
• “When spiderwebs are wet with dew that soon dries, expect a fine day.”
• “If the first week in August is unusually warm, the winter will be white and long.”
• “Spiderwebs floating at autumn sunset, bring frost that night, on this you may bet.”
• “If meadows are green at Christmas, at Easter they will be covered with frost.”

The book is chock full of tips on cooking, gardening, taking care of the house, how to find north without a compass, and how to predict a frost using nature and animals. (The wider the black band on a brown wooly caterpillar, the more severe the winter will be.)

The Old Farmer’s Almanac

The Old Farmer’s Almanac is a classic, and a new, updated version is available each year. There is also a lot of information on their website. There are weather, astronomy, gardening, calendars, food, and advice sections.

I also asked my farmer friend if he could share any more folklore sayings he’s heard from the “old-timers” and pioneers of days gone by. Here is what he shared:

• “If cows go in, rain will be short lasting. If they stay out, it’s going to rain a while.”
• “You can always tell it’s going to rain if the leaves turn under and the flies bite.”

When referring to planting dates on corn, if you plant late due to weather, you lose a bushel (of yield potential) after the 10th of May. “A bushel per day after the 10th of May,” the old saying goes.

Which of These Sayings Are Backed by Science?

A few of these have actual scientific explanations behind them, not just tradition:

• “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight”. This one is grounded in meteorology. In much of the world, weather systems move west to east, so a red sunset (sunlight passing through dry, dust-filled air to the west) often does mean clear weather is on its way in.
• Dogwood and other tree bloom timing. There’s an area of research called phenology, the study of how plants and animals respond to seasonal and climate cues. Tree bloom timing really does correlate with local frost risk, which is part of why “plant after the dogwoods bloom” has stuck around as long as it has.
• Insect activity thresholds. All insects are cold-blooded, so their activity level really does track ambient temperature closely. The specific formulas (like counting cricket chirps) are folk approximations, but the underlying principle is pretty sound.
• Woolly worm bands and severe winter predictions. Now, this one is popular but not supported by research. Studies looking into it haven’t found a correlation between band width and winter severity.
• The full moon affecting weather. There’s some legitimate research suggesting the full moon can very slightly raise the temperature of the lower atmosphere, potentially nudging rainfall and cloudiness. The effect is real but small, nowhere near strong enough to reliably predict a specific storm.

I’ve noticed the sayings about temperature, plant timing, or animal behavior tend to hold up better than the ones built on counting occurrences, like fog days or thunderstorms, and then projecting them onto a future season.

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The Same Wisdom, Different Regions

Weather folklore isn’t one-size-fits-all. One saying someone in Maine recites every growing season may be completely irrelevant, and even odd-sounding, to someone living on the high desert regions of New Mexico! But the overlying idea of watching nature and not the calendar holds up everywhere even when the specific signs and dates are local. Readers have shared some great regional examples over the years:

• Southern Arizona: Monsoon rains are on the way when mesquite beans start dropping.
• South Texas: An ant infestation in the house three or four days before a storm or heavy rain.
• Deep South: There’s always another frost before Easter, no matter how warm it gets in February. Don’t plant until the pecan leaves start unfurling, and once they do, there’s almost no chance of another freeze.
• Tennessee: Never plant before Easter.
• Savannah, Georgia area: Never plant before Valentine’s Day.
• Upstate New York: Never plant before Mother’s Day.

The lesson to learn here is to find out what the old-timers say specifically in your area, not just what a general folklore collection says. An almanac written in New England won’t necessarily apply in South Texas, and pioneer-era wisdom from a colder climate period (much of it dates to the “Little Ice Age,” believe it or not) may run early compared to today’s average frost dates.

More Weather Wisdom From Our Readers

Readers have shared plenty of their own family and regional sayings over the years. A few favorites:

• “Plant root crops during a waning moon, above-ground crops during a waxing moon.”
• “It’s time to plant corn when the lightning bugs come out.”
• “Knee high by the Fourth of July”, the traditional benchmark for whether your corn is on track.
• “When nut trees leaf out, spring is about. If flies are gathering at the door, it will rain for sure.”
• “If cows go in, rain will be short-lasting. If they stay out, it’s going to rain a while.” Related: cows lying down before noon is also said to signal rain on the way.
• Watching for ash trees to leaf out to the size of a squirrel’s ear was a traditional signal that it was safe to plant corn. A saying old enough to show up in pioneer-era writing about farm life.

None of these are guaranteed. But taken together with what’s already in this post, they’re a reminder that generations of careful observation produced some reliable patterns, long before anyone had a weather app.

The Final Word

As in seeing the truth of Great Depression wisdom, I will pay more attention to nature regarding gardening and weather after seeing some pioneer weather wisdom come true this year.

I’m planning to buy some Old Farmer’s Almanac books and teach my children some of the folklore sayings as we see them come true. I already taught them about the June Bugs only coming out if the night was warm enough. I plan to take to heart the advice in Ben Franklin’s Almanac of Wit, Wisdom, and Practical Advice to “… open your mind to the possibilities that exist to understand the world …”

What folklore weather wisdom have you found to be true?

Originally published August 2, 2016; updated most recently in July, 2026.