It’s always great to hear from you
SCHOOL VISITS
As most of you know, I love getting out in the community to meet people and discuss the weather. For much of my career, I’ve made a point of visiting Grade 5 classrooms all over Atlantic Canada as part of their weather unit studies.
This week I paid a visit to Ms. Dewolf’s Grade 5 class at Joseph Howe Elementary school in Halifax. The students had been studying the weather unit and made some lovely rain gauges, one of which was bedazzled!
I spent the morning with the students discussing everything from A to Z and as I walked out the door, a girl in the class said, “You have a very important job. If we didn’t have weathermen, how would we know how to dress? Some boys are still wearing shorts!”
All this to say, you’re never too young – or too old – to enjoy weather watching!
READER FEEDBACK
One of my other favourite things is reading your feedback. A week ago, Luella Hennigar was inspired to reach out after reading my Grandma Says column on cats and the snow.
Here’s an excerpt from that column: The first thing you’ll need is a cat; there was never a lack of those on the farm. You’ll also need to know the phase of the moon – I will get to why in just a moment.
Then Grandma kept an eye on the ground; she was waiting for the first snow cover of the season. A light dusting wasn’t quite sufficient; there had to be enough snow on the ground to be able to see the cat’s tracks. The timing of that snowfall would help Grandma calculate the number of times it would snow during the upcoming winter.
To the moon now: Grandma believed that if you took the date of the first snowfall in which you could see a cat’s tracks and added it to the age of the moon you would get the number of snowfalls for your area. And here’s what Luella Hennigar had to say: The new moon was on Nov. 7 (and) on the night of Nov. 19 we had three or four inches of snow here in Maple Grove, Hants County, just 10 kilometres from Maitland. When I got up the next morning there were deer tracks across my yard and the tracks of a couple of my neighbour’s cats all around my house. According to that, we are in for a number of snowstorms this winter. Hope (the storms) only leave a small amount (of snow) each time, so I don’t have to be plowed out each time. I enjoy all the forecasters’ comments but use my own judgments when it comes to believing them as I have spent 91 winters in Nova Scotia!