By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--December 9, 2023
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Growing up the first few years next to the grandparents’ farm in Henry County, Indiana, it was the most natural thing in the world to pay attention to the weather. I remember days with puffy cumulus clouds and chilly breezes after a storm. There was a spell of several days of rain one spring before I started school. There was a memorable blizzard in ’61 during the basketball tournament.
When we visited any family relatives, weather was always the first topic of conversation. There were crops to plant in the spring, but the ground couldn’t be too wet or too cold. When it was time to cut wheat, heavy rain or wind could lodge the grain, making harvest difficult.
The chanciest crop was hay, of course. It needed rain to grow, but almost any rain after it had been mowed portended disaster. In those days before haybines and tedders became common, it took three full days of ideal weather to dry it down enough to bale.
Midwest summers are humid, so predicting three straight days of dry heat was not an easy thing to do. If fine cattle depended on the crucial first and second cutting, it was essential to be able to predict the unpredictable weather. The ground needed to be fairly dry to run the cultivators.
In the fall, corn needed to dry on the stalk, then be picked and later shelled when the ground was either dry or frozen. My grandparents also had a large garden, so weather was a consideration every day of the year.
There were minimalist weather forecasts in the daily papers, and more on the radio if there were a farm show like one that could be heard at 1190 on the AM dial, WOWO in Ft. Wayne. Beyond these and a glance at the almanac, weather forecasting was a survival skill developed on the farm.
Without a barometer, my grandfather made his observations based on patterns, and hoped they held steady. Wind direction was important, so the weathervane on the barn was much more than just an ornament. Clouds........