WEATHER DETECTING

PREDICTING THE SEASONS

Does a bumper summer crop of nuts, berries and fruits mean a hard winter is coming? Not necessarily. “Sadly, we can’t predict the future from a bountiful crop,” writes Peter Wohlleben. “After all, the fruit buds are produced the previous summer. If it indicates anything, an abundance of acorns and beechnuts in the forests suggests … a dry summer the previous year.”

Can snowmen sense the coming of spring? Astonishingly, yes … though only in the sense that if you can manage to build one, it means the snow itself is of the right consistency to be rolled into balls. And since this happens when temperatures are comparatively mild, it could mean that a long, hard spell is coming to an end.

Do pine cones act as weather stations? Sort of. “They open up in sunny, dry weather making a big puffy cone, while in rainy weather they close up making the cone smaller and narrower,” explains Wohlleben. “However, since the change lags behind the weather … they are completely useless as a forecasting instrument.”

TELL THE TIME BY NATURE’S CLOCK

You can set your watch by flowers, many of which open at different times of day. “Pumpkins and courgettes kick things off first by opening their flowers at 5 o’clock in the morning,” writes Peter Wohlleben in The Weather Detective. “From 8am the marigolds spread out their petals and the daisies follow at 9.”

Meanwhile, birdsong can help tell us the early morning time but only if your ears are attuned to the melodies of particular birds, since the various species vary their peak dawn chorus moment, in order to ensure their territorial and mating calls aren’t drowned out by others.

On the RSPB’s website, Jenny Shelton offers this evocative chronology of the UK’s dawn chorus, which she says peaks in the half-hour before and after sunrise: “Robins, blackbirds and song thrushes begin, then the wrens and warblers join in. Finally, come the chaffinches, goldfinches and sparrows. It’s thought that, because this last group have smaller eyes, they need more light to find food.”

WHY DOES MIDSUMMER’S DAY FALL AT THE BEGINNING OF SUMMER?

On Midsummer’s Day, June 21, the sun is at its peak in the sky. “The reason why summer only truly begins after this peak,” writes Peter Wohlleben, “is that the sun needs several weeks to heat up the air. This means the temperature increase lags a little behind the sun’s height in the sky, and the air temperature only reaches its maximum later in the season when the days are already getting shorter again.”