This was the view from near my home today. Cows on Bidwell Ranch acting like a weather-vane…all pointed north, due to a strong south wind with stinging rain…and who needs stinging wind in your face?
Click for a hi-res image.
Saw it on my weather station at www.bidwellranchcam.com and used my camera to get this photo from ground level. Everybody should have one of these 😉
UPDATE: My assumption about cowvanes was incorrect. Willis Eschenbach advises:
As a reformed cowboy, I fear you’ve made a small error. You assume the cows are facing downwind because they don’t like the wind in their faces … but horses always stand the other way, facing the wind. It has to do with which way the hair runs on their bodies. Horses hair runs from the bow to the stern, and on cows it runs the other way. They both stand so their hair sheds the rain …
w.
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Clever cows!
Back in the days when I was flying gliders we used to call these “leather covered wind socks!”
A mooving veined weather vane.
Link is broken.
Thankfully none flying in twisters. I wonder if any flew down in French Camp on Wednesday?
Yes, and if my rear-end smelled like that, I’d point it into the shower too.
Over the hill from you in the Eastern Sierra, we got just over a foot of snow this morning . Expect another foot by tommorrow.
Any skiers out there, it has been good the last few days, even better today and tommorrow!
Hope they’re only busy makin’ sour cream…they don’t look happy at all!!
Or they were living by the Monty Python principle (“Holy Grail”) that “I fart in your general direction”
…..to show how they really feel about inclement weather.
Best of all they produce both fertilizer AND climate science.
Our Donkeys gave up trying to deal with the wind, snow and hail a few minutes ago and headed to the barn (2400 ft elevation east of Sac). It’s very soggy in my pastures (3.7″ of rain with this storm and counting).
mmmm….I’ll be enjoying one of their pals tonight in a churrascaria in Rio
We use the “Goat-o-meter” If it is even misting the goats run for cover. The horse do like the cows and turn the tail to the wind.
My mom grew up on a farm – she swears that if the cows climb the hill, it means it’s going to rain. If they stay down low, fair weather is assured.
Recall in “Huckleberry Finn” when huck was posing as a girl and being grilled by the country woman who suspected he was a boy in disguise? One of the questions she shot him was:
“If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with their heads pointed the same direction?”
“The whole fifteen, mum.”
Only a Philistine would suggest that cows could replace weathermen. But perhaps…..just maybe…. the CAGW crowd could learn from their wisdom. On the other hand, maybe not.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
“You don’t need a weather vane to know which way the wind blows” – Bob Dylan, 1965
But the computer models all say they should be lying down facing South.
Anthony, this is one time I refuse to be COWED by your arguements. Obviously, with the studies of BOVINE BELCHING we can figure out that YOU, yes YOU are somehow responsible for a major part of GHG emissions.
The only solution, to EAT the problem(s)!
Several years ago I had a friend that would predict the weather by where and how the cows were standing in a field along US 36 near Boulder, CO. He was usually pretty accurate with it.
…Btw, the rain you got a few hours ago has migrated over the Sierra, and is coming down as snow in Reno at 5,000ft as of 10:40am PST.. and it’s starting to stick!
…. Bbtw…. There’s some “fact checker” going on at the Reno Gazette Journal debunking Christy’s Sierra snow trend, where he’s pitted against David Pierce of UCSD/Scripps. Don’t let Willis see this.
http://www.rgj.com/section/blogs12?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&U=8a686c58-d08c-47e8-8216-d67b1e581e99&plckPostId=Blog:8a686c58-d08c-47e8-8216-d67b1e581e99Post:5ca3fc36-cadb-44c2-8e89-9438df79163f&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest
I have an old Army flight training manual from the 1930s, in which it discusses how to determine wind direction on the ground when no wind sock is present. One of the suggestions was to observe any livestock, as they would tend to face away from the wind. Another was to watch trees, grain fields, chimney smoke etc. Those were the good ol’ stick and rudder days of canvas and wood.
Cows are naturally immune to boredom.
At last a reliable wind proxy! The good folks at the IPCC can model historical wind patterns based on the direction of skeletal remains (with an additional fudge factor of course).
No doubt such an amazing record would find our current wind patterns to be unprecedented in the Earth’s history.
The concensus is the wind is coming from the south.