Weather and sayings: which proverbs are always reliable?

“In April, do not discover yourself with a wire. In May, do what you please.” The adage is well known. For this month of April 2023, it seems that the old weather diction has been verified. No ? “Do you think that the month of April is cold? Think again […]. You are no longer used to it because you were deceived by previous months of April that were too hot”, explains Serge Zaka, agroclimatologist, on Twitter.

It must be said that the sayings are tempting. Illustrated, often in rhyme, they perfectly punctuate everyone’s weather observations. There are several thousand sayings, different from one region to another, sometimes contradicting each other. In other words, there is something for all circumstances.

These proverbs are based on the observations of our ancestors who were looking for benchmarks to adapt their sowing and harvesting periods. But now, in the age of climate change and weather satellites, what are they worth?

“The relevance of certain sayings has been undermined both by agrometeorological techniques which are much more convincing and by the impact of global warming which can now cause, as in 2021, false springs in winter followed by periods late frost”, explains Joël Limouzin, cereal breeder, to Parisian. “This archaic system has no scientific value and 90% of sayings do not hold true. When, by chance, certain sayings hold true one year, people tend to remember only that time”, supports the agroclimatologist Serge Zaka.

However, meteorologists tend to quote the saying of the day in their radio or television bulletins. “This allows a scientific message to be conveyed in a less arid way… If they are folklore, the sayings are far from all fanciful”, affirms Stéphane Fievet, amateur meteorologist founder of the web page Météone, at the Telegram.

Which sayings have the highest reliability? Check it out in our slideshow below.