WINDMILL: Predicting the weather has come a long way

These early cold fronts coming through West Texas are reminiscent of the old days of the 1970s when I met almost daily with a roundtable of morning coffee drinkers at the old Jackson House on West Beauregard on my way to the Standard-Times. The oldtimers of that time would forecast a wet winter when the first northers came in with rain. Those were the days when folks like the late Boze Hartgrove, a Concho and Reagan County rancher, the late D. K. McMullen, also a Reagan County rancher and lamb buyer, and the late Tom Poteet, one of the last country traders, would forecast the weather by the signs of the moon or the length of their horse’s hair. A legend told to me by Harry Firstbrook of Marfa when I was writing Windmill Country in the 1970s promoted the theory that more mesquite beans mean more wintertime. The late Jerry Mack Johnson, a San Angelo author and weather prognosticator, said a severe winter is likely when the tree leaves fall late. If the leaves drop early, the fall will be short and the winter will be mild. “A late frost means a long, hard winter. Two frosts mean winter will soon appear,” Johnson wrote in his book “Country Wisdom. In today’s world, with a 24-hour weather channel supplying us with pictures of current conditions from space, it’s hard for this generation to believe we lived without computer models to plan farm and ranch activity. Much of the oldtimers’ foundation in weather prediction was based on knowledge passed down from the American Indians, who observed natural phenomena...read more