predicting the weather on the trail

[newjeep123]

Has anyone learned to predict the weather by "feel". Seems like after a number of days or weeks spent on the trail, one would learn to recognize the subtle signs that most of us citified folks miss.
What prompted this was the fact that all the elephants in Indonesia went to high ground before the big tsunami - do ya think people could have this latent skill?

 

[Rivet]

Perhaps they sense a drop in air pressure?
Usually when the pressure drops, smells that were kept down, rise up and things smell different. If that makes any sense.

 

[DougPaul]

Has anyone learned to predict the weather by "feel". Seems like after a number of days or weeks spent on the trail, one would learn to recognize the subtle signs that most of us citified folks miss.
What prompted this was the fact that all the elephants in Indonesia went to high ground before the big tsunami - do ya think people could have this latent skill?

Perhaps this "feeling" is just observation without explicitly thinking about it.

When I hike, I tend to watch the weather for trends. It is now so automatic that I don't think about it--but the knowledge of what is happening is always there ready to be factored into my plan. A pilot would call it maintaining "situational awareness".

Perhaps the elephants did the same thing--but being less intellegent, figured that something funny was going on with water so I should get to high ground whereas humans saw something funny going on and curiosity lead them to go investigate. Just a theory--I'm not an elephant psychologist and can't talk to them nor do I play one on TV or pretend to talk to them on TV.

Elephants also have far better low frequency hearing than we do--perhaps they heard something that we could not.

Doug

 

[ADK4Life]

I find it almost impossible to predict weather on the presidentials. I have seen it go from sunny to storms in minutes.

 

[Puck]

Has anyone learned to predict the weather by "feel". Seems like after a number of days or weeks spent on the trail, one would learn to recognize the subtle signs that most of us citified folks miss.
What prompted this was the fact that all the elephants in Indonesia went to high ground before the big tsunami - do ya think people could have this latent skill?

Or you could hike with elephants. If my hisotry serves me correct some elephants were peakbagging in the Alps with thier friend Hannibal.

 

[dougb]

I think the elephant/tsunami link isn't the same thing as weather. There are loads of reports of animals sensing earthquakes ahead of time. Could be ultra-low frequency noise, or an odor, etc.

When I was a kid, I had a set of cards that told you how to predict the weather from clouds - i.e. cirrus clouds came a day or so ahead of a warm front & that meant it would rain for a long time. I occasionally see the same basic info on cards in outfitters. Keeping an eye on the sky works pretty well, and can occasionally helped avoid an unexpected soaking. A few other old sayings, like 'fog means a hot day' and 'no dew in the AM means rain' seem to work pretty well.

On the other hand, I always carry a rain jacket.