Sunday, October 12, 2014

Winter Predictions

As the cooler weather moves in we always wonder what the coming season will hold for us. This has particularly been on people's minds here, as Oklahoma is not known for its calm and accommodating weather. We had an extremely mild storm season and a moderate summer. The weather has been so nice that most people think it is inevitable that the proverbial other shoe will drop this winter.

Today we rely on our local forecasters to tell us what to expect when we walk out the door but for years man has turned to nature for clues as to what to expect for the next few months. Most people do not take these practices seriously anymore but they can be fun and it's always interesting to see if they will turn out to be true.

Recently I saw a snippet on the Farmer's Almanac where a lady said she checks persimmon seeds every year to see what they foretell for the coming winter. When you cut the seed in half you will see one of three things. A fork, a knife, or a spoon. A fork means you will have a mild winter. A knife means it will be bitingly cold and a spoon means you will have a lot of snow. She said she had never had all of the seeds that she cut open show the same thing and they were all spoons!

http://farmersalmanac.com/press-releases/2014/09/30/persimmon-what-seeds-predict/



We have some persimmon trees down the road from us so we thought we would check our persimmons and see what we got. We only cut open a few but they had spoons. The Farmer's Almanac is not predicting a very snowy winter for us but the persimmon seeds are telling a different story. So what predictions are you seeing where you live?