Folklore Forecasting

We've begun the year with a blast of arctic air, after a tee-shirt mild holiday season, so we got to wondering about what's ahead weather-wise according to some of the forecasting folklore peculiar to the Lowcountry.

There's the "twelve days of January" for starters, related to the Lowcountry's agricultural history and the farmer's need to time preparations for the spring growing season. The first twelve days of January are said to predict the weather for the rest of the year, with the weather on each of the twelve days indicating what to expect meteorologically for each of the year's months. By this reckoning, we can expect below average temperatures for most of 2025.

Miniature Meteorologist?

Lowcountry natives have always held that the temperature during warmer months can be determined from the chirping of crickets, and this folk belief actually has a scientific basis, formulated by one Amos Dolbear in 1897. Warmer temperatures make it easier for crickets to rub their wings together to produce the chirps, and Dolbear discovered that counting the number of chirps over fifteen seconds, and than adding 40, will produce a rough estimate of the outdoor temperature. We'll have to wait until late spring to test this one out, when crickets begin their annual concert.

Sailor's Warning - Dawn on North Beach

"Red sky at night, sailors delight; red sky at morning, sailors take warning" isn't peculiar to the Lowcountry but this, too, has a factual basis for coastal communities. Weather systems generally move from west to east, following the jet stream, so if clouds bank up to the east but a clear red sunset is to the west, drier and clear weather can be expected the next day; if the eastern sky is red at sunrise, but with clouds arriving from the west, rain may be on the way. So those spectacular sunsets over the marshes we love to see actually can be harbingers of good weather.

You can test another folk belief at the coming spring equinox on March 20th. The spring and fall equinoxes are said to be the only time of the year when you can balance an egg on its end. The (faulty) reasoning is that since the sun is directly over the equator at each equinox, the earth's gravity is in balance. This isn't true, of course, at least as far as balancing an egg is concerned. But give it a go on March 20th and see what happens.

Whale Tales

Our beaches may seem relatively quiet this winter season, but there's quite a lot of activity further out in deeper water as majestic North Atlantic right whales migrate south along the east coast to feed in warmer waters, and for females to calve and tend their newborns. But for these endangered animals, trouble awaits from entanglement with trawler nets and collisions with commercial fishery and shipping traffic. Fewer than 360 right whales remain, according to the NOAA's fisheries division, including fewer than 70 breeding females.

Right whales are baleen whales, feeding on plankton filtered from the water. They're easily identified by their notched tails and by the white patches known as callosities on their heads. They travel over a thousand miles each year from summer feeding grounds off the Canadian coast to winter grounds off the coasts of North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. They're long-lived, with an average life span of 70 years, although centenarians have been reported.

Once plentiful, right whales were hunted to near-extinction by the turn of the twentieth century, prized for the spermaceti filling the cavities of their enormous heads and for the oil held within their 50-foot-long bodies. Because they floated on the surface after being killed, whalers considered them the "right" whales for the ease of harvesting and the bounty each victim provided. As the number of right whales dwindled, other species were hunted until international conventions against commercial slaughter were imposed; and while populations of right whales stabilized, the species has never returned to sustainable levels.

This female died off the Virginia coast from an encounter with shipping traffic

Mortality remains a threat to the right whales' survival, since the gestation period of a full year and the birth of only one calf means each loss of a mother or calf, or both, keeps the species hovering on the edge. Imposed speed limits in sensitive areas on freighters and commercial fishing boats have been effective, but advocates say stronger federal regulations to monitor and prevent such deaths are needed; and while the NOAA works to develop such regulations, resistance in Congress and from the shipping and fishing industries remains stiff. You can learn more about the NOAA's efforts to preserve these annual visitors to our coasts here.

Year In/Year Out

It's the season of reflection and and anticipation as we look back over the past year and look forward to the new one on the horizon. Our fall trips wrapped up earlier this month, and thanks to your support SINHG members enjoyed learning about everything from Charleston's ghosts to the teeming marine life of our harbors and tidal creeks. Our spring 2025 trips are waiting in the wings while we pause to welcome in the New Year.

A dish of good fortune

If you've lived in the South and especially in the Lowcountry for any length of time, collard greens, black-eyed peas and Hoppin' John are surely on your New Year menu. These traditional foods are believed to help ensure a prosperous year - collard greens being the color of money, black-eyed peas standing in for coins, and the spicy, field vegetable-and rice-based Hoppin' John predicting a successful growing season. The origin of the dish's name is still much debated. Some think it's from the nickname given to a popular African-American man in Charleston with a faulty leg who first served the dish; or maybe it's because children, in anticipation of eating such a sumptuous meal, would hop around the dinner table in excitement. All that's known for sure is that the first use of the name in print was in landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted's 1861 travelogue, "A Journey In The Seaboard Slave States", in which he claimed he'd been served Hoppin' John by the aristocratic Sarah Rutledge during a visit to Charleston.

Watch Night and freedom

Two years after Olmsted's visit, the Emancipation Proclamation freeing enslaved Blacks took effect on January 1, 1863, giving rise to another New Year tradition observed in the Gullah Geechee community - Watch Night. On "Freedom's Eve", December 31st, Watch Night services take place in the community's churches throughout the Lowcountry, with sacred music, Bible readings, reconciliation of disputes and public resolutions for the coming year. A reading of the Proclamation follows, as church elders serving as Watchmen keep an eye on the clock and sing the last hymn of the outgoing year as midnight approaches and the entire congregation kneels in prayer. On New Year's Day, Charleston's parade is also known as the Emancipation Day parade, the nation's longest continuously held such parade.

"The anticipation of the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation still fills me with a great sense of pride and dignity every year," declared one churchgoer who attended her first Lowcountry Watch Night when she was just eleven years old. "It's a time of putting our best foot forward."