The kids came running in the door tonight adjuring me to go outside and take a look at the ring around the moon.
It was HUGE! The moon is waxing, and is larger than half. The sky is bright and clear and because the moon is directly overhead, the stars are rather dim.
Growing up I always heard that a ring around the moon was a warning that bad weather was on its way. I also heard that the number of stars had something to do with the number of days of bad weather. I counted three stars, but that was only because they were the brightest. Many more must have been invisible to my eye due to the amount of light reflecting off the moon. According to one website I investigated, the moon halo is caused by ice crystals in high cirrus clouds that typically precede a warm front bringing in stormy weather.
Maybe the old grandfathers didn't have google to look up weather trivia, but they did have lots of time spent outdoors taking care of farm animals, bringing in firewood, and all that time was spent in observation. I think the old grandfathers were wonderful naturalists and I hope we will model our lives after them, remembering to take time to take note of amazing things like gigantic humongous rings around moons.
The weatherman predicts stormy snow this week. Guess we shall see if he and the grandfathers are correct.
Meanwhile, I had better go feed the baby. I mean throw some more logs on the woodstove.
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From the looks of things outside my window, the moon was telling you snow was on the way. She's a grand ol prognosticator, she is.
The ring around the moon here last night was not so large and so far we only have a few inches of snow. I just got a load of locust, yippee. Someone said this is to be the worst weather week of the season. That would be nice. Last year started out like this.....
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