I just got back from two weeks in the north woods, where internet was available only intermittently (and I did not use it at all). The lodge at the resort we were staying at posted a ten-day forecast regularly, but it was never the same from day to day. A rainstorm in the near future one day might never be coming at all the next day. So it was time to do my own weather forecasting.

I used the following rules of thumb to make my predictions:

1. The temperature never changes by very much from day to day.
2. Warm fronts bring rain without thunder; cold fronts bring thunderstorms.
3. If it's already over about seventy, there's probably not a warm front coming through.

To predict precipitation, I turned my attention to dandelions. When they have gone to seed (which happened a long time ago here, but three degrees further north they did that while I was there), the ball of seeds is actually a crude barometer. Low pressure makes each seed pull itself in, shrinking the ball and bunching up its surface. Lower pressure than normal in the evening predicts a rainy day the next day.

After two days of practice on this, I decided to predict the quality of the fishing. If it's raining, nobody's likely to fish much, but sunny days lead to bad fishing (or so goes the superstition among the piss-poor fishermen of my extended family, myself included). If I was sure about the rain, I said the fishing would be good; if I was less sure I said it would be bad - since we all suck at fishing enough that this is a safe default guess. And since we were having dinner in a lodge that seemed to always have walleye encrusted with some nut and served with a lemon garlic cream sauce, I decided to start predicting the nut of choice based on what hadn't happened in a while.

My logbook reads as follows.

Sat-Sun: 70, showers
Result: 65ish, showers

Sun-Mon: 70, showers
Result: 70ish, sunny

Mon-Tue: 70, showers
Fish forecast - good fishing
Walnuts on walleye
Result: 70ish, sunny
Poor fishing, broiled walleye
[ed note: that walleye lacked nuts.]

Tue-Wed: 70, rain
No fish, walnuts
Result: Correct on weather
Fishing OK, pecans

Wed-Thu: cooler, partly cloudy
Poor fishing, almonds
[ed note: apparently I gave up on the walnuts]
Results: Spot on, except pecans.

Thu-Fri: 70, Rain
OK fishing, almonds (it's been too long)
Results: weather on the money
nutless walleye, OK fishing

Fri-Sat: 67, very rainy
OK fishing but nobody will
Almonds, dammit. Almonds
Results: Exactly right. Finally.
(Nobody fished to my knowledge.)

So that's it - a quick-and-dirty task completed while away from SF0. My weather prediction algorithm is slightly pessimistic, but it works. And I suck at predicting everything else.