“This summer has been one very long heatwave, bring on winter.”
— Janet Elaine White
Janet is not the only one wishing for winter. I wonder if she will feel the same way in a few months — when Mother Nature dumps 30 centimetres of snow in our driveways?
We are rapidly approaching the midway mark of the last month of the meteorological summer. I didn’t want to get too far into the month before bringing up the topic of fog. We’ve already experienced some fog and no doubt there will be more before the month is out.
Here’s why this is significant: Grandma believed it was very important to count the number of “fog days” in August. According to Grandma, there is a correlation between the number of foggy days in August and the number of winter snowfalls. She believed that for every August fog, there was a winter snowfall.
A “fog day” is defined as a day with fog — that limits visibility to less than one kilometre and persists for several hours. And there’s more: a dense fog signifies and heavy snowfall. Fog does become more likely in August; the nights grow longer and summertime humidity levels are still very high.
There is no scientific proof to either confirm or debunk this weather saying but it’s still fun to keep track of the weather folklore!
Gather the kids around, get out an old-fashioned calendar, a pencil and you’re off. I want to hear from you at the end of the month.
I have one more August weather gem to share with you, but given the weather we’ve been experiencing, you might not like it: “if the first week of August is unusually hot, the following winter will be cold and snowy.” As strange as this sounds, this one has a decent accuracy rate.
I’m off to wax my shovel . .
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Cindy Day is the chief meteorologist for SaltWire Network
