Farmers are known, for good reasons, for keeping up with what’s going on with the weather — especially through the growing seasons.
Many technological advancements have refined that chore through the years, with satellites helping on-the-ground forecasters better know what farmers can expect what weather will be hitting their fields and animals during the coming days. Weather stations set up around some farms can give high-tech moment-by-moment updates about when planting or harvesting should occur or to automatically engage irrigation systems.
It’s all there, it seems, at the farmers’ fingertips for the taking. What more information could be required?
Even with all of the technology, though, farmers are born with the innate trait of assessing much of the weather with their own eyes and senses. That starts with the habit of glancing to sky as farmyards are crossed for morning chores, that glance a check to see whether the stars and moon can be seen. And then, as chores are under way, occasional glances are made to the east to see what the first signs of sunlight are bringing.
This week’s forecast brings some colder-than-normal May nights to the region, with dips below freezing as the region heads toward the May 12 average last day of frost. But today’s morning glance to the east to see what the morning’s first light brings with it the reminder that, each day this time of the year, the sun is rising farther to the northern end of the east horizon.
Noting how the sunrise creeps farther north each May morning — and all the way through to June’s first day of summer — is a reminder to farmers that warmer days will continue to approach.
The cold and frost will stop arriving and the crops will grow; that’s a fact given to farmers’ eyes on an early May morning.
— Scott Schultz
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