A New Way to Forecast the Weather

So since it's Christmas and the weather was 40 degrees and sunny today...I thought I would take a different route from the normal blog posts. Today I ran across this article about a farmer from North Dakota who uses a different way to forecast the weather. I think I might run this option by Eric and Adam and see what they say. haha.

I will recap the story for you here...but the story can be found on redorbit.com under Oddities.

Cattle farmer Paul Smokov of Steele North Dakota...uses pig spleens yes that's right pig spleens to forecast snow storms. According to Smokov...if the spleen is wide where it attaches to the pig's stomach and then narrows..it usually means weather will arrive early followed by a mild spring. A narrow-to-wide spleen can mean harsh weather in the spring.

Smokov's says his spleens are accurate 85% of the time. So far the National Weather Service out of Bismarck's three month outlook is calling for a normal winter in North Dakota which matches up with Smokov's.

I also have Christmas Weather Trivia for you.

On Christmas in 1836: The United Kingdom's heavist snowstorm leaves drifts more than 7 metres high in some places...and many are killed.

1974: Cyclone Tracey destroys much of Darwin in Northern Territory, Australia. 60 people are killed and winds reach up to 217 kilometers per hour.

1988: A winter snowstorm over Las Vegas produces a white Christmas for the first time on record.