New Year’s Eve day 2023: the fog was so thick we could barely see the red barn behind the house. New Year’s Day dawned bright and warm, but by the next day the fog was back. And the next day, and the next. Most of that whole week, the prairie was white on white on white for as far as the eye could see — the fog turning to frost on the branches and buildings, covering the grasses and fence posts, shrouding the sky in a dense shimmering swirl of moisture.
We get a lot of sun here in western Dakota, so I don’t mind the foggy days except for one thing: the fog calendar. If you are unfamiliar with this system of weather prediction, it is folk wisdom around these parts that dense fog predicts future precipitation. Most people don’t take it too seriously until we have a week like that one in 2023, and then the fog calendar is suddenly on everyone’s mind.
Most people who know about the fog calendar use the “three-month rule,” but the calculations are a little more detailed than that. Here’s some information I’ve shared before:
1. The fog calendar goes as follows: Count exactly three moon cycles after a foggy morning and/or notable fog event, and you will get precipitation on that date. (Three lunar cycles are approximately 84 days.)
2. Mind you — this “precipitation event” might be snow, rain or MORE FOG (in which case, reset your fog calendar.)
3. The fog calendar is a product of the Great Plains. The geography of these plains means we have fairly standard ways winter weather travels through our region. Therefore, I’m assuming this doesn’t work the same in other regions.
Guess what happened 84 days after New Year’s in 2024? Our first mama cow went into labor, and yes, there was also a precipitation event. Not surprising if you believe another piece of folk wisdom that says barometric pressure shifts cause livestock (and humans) to go into labor. Thankfully, it wasn’t as cold or miserable as it could have been, but it was cold and miserable enough.
This winter has been mild. The mildest, by far, of the sixteen I’ve spent in western South Dakota. So mild that when we took the kids to a movie in a neighboring town last weekend, we didn’t check the weather, didn’t pack extra winter gear, AND wore regular shoes instead of boots. Imagine our surprise when we drove the 45 miles north and discovered snow on the ground! We slipped our way into the theater, teeth chattering, stunned that our bodies had so thoroughly forgotten what February usually feels like.
“We’ve gone soft!” I told my husband when we left the theater.
And now it’s March, the month that marks the astronomical beginning of spring as well as the beginning of our calving season. Once again, we experienced a substantial fog event in January. It was not as long as the one in 2023, but the fog-turned-frost was intense enough to bring down power lines. Not a great omen.
Epic spring storms are often the only things that get the grass growing and keep us from drought, a perennial concern on the western prairie. That’s how we usually comfort ourselves when those spring storms hit, anyway. Meanwhile, the idea that easy, mild weather will continue — and the fog calendar is predicting warm rain instead of hard snow — is exactly the kind of logic that leads you to wear thin-soled shoes through snow banks in February.
I sent the kids to school in winter coats today, but if the forecast holds true, they won’t need them much for the next 10 days. After that, it’s anybody’s guess. I would never dare to suggest that maybe, MAYBE we will get a mild winter from start to finish, because of the folksiest wisdom of all: Don’t tempt fate! And now, I’d better go find some wood to knock on for even writing all this down…
