British Billy anticipates St. Swithin's Day, July 15.

  • Published
  • By British Billy
  • 48th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, England --  You may have noticed the weather can be a little changeable and unpredictable here in the U.K. Contrary to the beliefs of many Americans, it does not always rain in Britain, but what many fail to realise is that you need to be prepared for a deluge, because our British rain has a tendency to surprise you with a sneaky shower, or will soak you with the very fine drizzle we seem to specialise in here. It has the ability to permeate through to your very undergarments, should you not have had the forethought to take a rain coat or brolly* with you.

Cats, in common with many of nature's wonders, are sensitive to quite small meteorological changes. My whiskers and fur are able to sense small pressure variations, and my keen olfactory system detects all kinds of signals in the environment. Of course, humans form many daft conclusions from my behaviour, such as the common belief that, if I wash behind my ears, it's a sign of impending rain. What drivel - my ears are simply in need of a good scrub.

According to British folklore, if it rains on July 15, St. Swithin's Day, it means we can expect 40 more days of rain. As the old rhyme goes:

"St. Swithin's day, if ye do rain,
For forty days it will remain;
St. Swithin's day, if ye be fair,
For forty days 'twill rain nae mair."

St. Swithin, does not appear to have had any extraordinary ability to predict the weather during his lifetime, and I am sure he washed behind his ears on a regular basis. After all, cleanliness is next to godliness, or so they say. It was after his death and burial that St. Swithin apparently developed his meteorological skills.

St. Swithin, or Swithun, as would seem to be the original spelling of his name, was a 9th Century bishop of Winchester. Swithun had a death-bed request - to be buried, not with his episcopal predecessors in a prominent place within Winchester cathedral, but outside in a simple tomb, "where the sweet rain of heaven may fall upon my grave".

It is said his successor, Bishop Aethelwold, considered it unworthy for such an important figure to be buried outside. Instead a great ceremony was arranged to translate Swithun's remains to a magnificent shrine in the church.

This ceremony took place July 15 in the year 971 A.D., but was ruined by a tremendous rainstorm, which broke a period of drought. The weather remained abnormally rainy for several weeks thereafter.

This disaster was viewed as an indication of divine displeasure, and Swithun's bones were left where they were.

From then,  July 15 became cursed with St. Swithin's prediction, but it never strictly comes true. However, some years have been a close run thing, such as the hot summer of 1976, when 38 out of 40 days were dry following St. Swithin's Day.

There is a grain of truth to the folklore, though, because the weather around mid-July often gets stuck in a rut. July and August is the time when there is a noticeable tendency for the weather to get into a particular mode and persist, so it is the general weather for a couple of weeks around St Swithin's Day that matters most -- rather than the day itself.

A better version of St. Swithin's saying might go: If it rains a lot in the fortnight around July 15, expect unsettled weather for the rest of the summer, but if it's fair, then decent weather is on the way.

Not as catchy, but closer to the truth.

Excuse me a moment, if you wouldn't mind - I have this uncontrollable urge to lick my paw and wash round the back of my left ear.



*Slang for 'umbrella'