By Joel van der Veen
June 7, 2010

DAVIDSON - The heavy rain this past month may have surprised some people, but a few locals say they saw it coming, with a little help from the winter fog.

Norbert Reich kept track of the fog on his calendar, and he says he can use those records to predict the spring rain.

According to his method, a day with rain will follow 90 days after a day of fog. He says the area is due for a little more rain early this week.

"It works, I'm not kidding you," says Reich, who learned of this supposed pattern from his father, Val.

Bill Dieno says he uses the same system, handed down from his parents.

"Well, I predicted that the farmers would have a hard time getting their crop in the ground a month ago," he says, "and that's exactly what happened."

While these two and many others swear by this method, metereologists aren't quite convinced of its merits.

David Phillips, a senior climatologist for Environment Canada, says it's just folklore, although he admits the predictions were eerily accurate this year, following the unusually dense fog that hit the province this winter.

"If you do the arithmetic, it's a bit scary," he says, but adds, "There is absolutely no physical scientific connection."

Phillips says the fog prediction method is especially popular on the Prairies, but almost unheard-of in other provinces. If it were true, he says, there would be places in the Maritimes where the rain would never stop.

"I wish it was that way," he says. "We'd have this thing all figured out."

And while he admires the traditions of these weather forecasters, he says that it's just a coincidence the method was so accurate this time around.

"They're keen weather observers," he says. "(But) one happening doesn't prove the case."

The leaderonline is a division of The Davidson Leader, Davidson, Saskatchewan, Canada.