Beating the Heat

After all my whining about a rainy, cool summer, the Hundestage finally have arrived!

We've been soaking up as much of the warmth as possible, enjoying local festivals, hiking, watching American football, and walking around town sipping iced coffee drinks.  Lots to catch up on and photos to share in the next week.

Though the heat here is nothing like what our friends in Texas have been facing, these are the 4 or 5 days per year when it's too hot to sleep or eat and I miss having air-conditioning.  But it's made me rediscover a treat from childhood, and one of the best ways to banish the heat.

Ice cold watermelon!!

Bauernregeln

As I investigated the Schafskälter, I stumbled upon other Bavarian weather folklore, which collectively are known as the Bauernregeln ("Farmers' rules").  They typically are little rhyming sayings dealing with weather prediction - similar to our "Red sky at morning, sailors take warning..." and "March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb."  Different from the Anglo-American ones, many of these use the name of a saint to denote the timing (based on the date of the Saints' feast days). Not a surprise, really, as the Catholic church played a much greater role in daily life in old Bavaria than it did in the early days of the US.

With the Schafskälter, the Eisheilige, and the Siebenschläfer, the past 6 weeks have been quite full of activity and proverbs!

The Ice Saints (Eisheilige) are a cold snap in May, which farmers and gardeners expect to be the last frost of the season.  Gardeners are admonished to "Die Eisheiligen abwarten" ("Wait for the Ice Saints") before doing serious planting.

In the Julian calendar, this cold snap coincided with the feast days of St. Mamertus (11 May), St. Pancras (12 May), St. Servatius (13 May), St. Boniface (14 May) and St Sophie (15 May), hence the view that the saints brought the cold weather that ends with the day of "Kalten Sophie" ("Cold Sophie"). However, with the timing changes caused by adopting the Gregorian calendar, today this cold weather usually falls a week later in May.

The Siebenschläfer ("Seven Sleepers") is a pivotal day in weather forecasting, along the lines of American Groundhog Day.  Legend has it that the weather we have on the Siebenschläfer day is representative of the weather for the next few weeks.  "Wenn die Siebenschläfer Regen kochen, so regnets vier ganze Wochen,"says the rule ("When the Seven Sleepers cook up rain, it will rain for 4 whole weeks"). 

The name refers to the old Christian and Muslim legend of the Seven Sleepers (though it also is the name for the dormouse), who were martyrs who went into a cave to pray before their executions, fell asleep, and awoke a century or two later to find the world completely changed.  The meteorological explanation is that the jet stream settles into position around the end of June, thus often bringing stable (good or bad) weather in Central Europe for the next weeks. While the memorial day for the Seven Sleepers is celebrated on 27 June, for weather purposes it likely is around 7 July today (again due to changing from Julian to Gregorian calendars).

Since the weather yesterday (27 June) was wonderfully warm and perfect, I'm hoping this Bauernregel holds true! Just to be safe, I'll check in again on the 7th next week. We could use some warm days after the rainy cool of the Schafskälter days!

A few Bauernregeln: (sadly they lose the rhyme in translation)

Pflanze nie vor der Kalten Sophie - Never plant before Cold Sophie"

Corpus Christi schön und klar, guter Wein in diesem Jahr - "When Corpus Christi is lovely and clear, we'll have good wine this year"
Je nasser ist der Februar, desto nasser wird das ganze Jahr - "The wetter February is, the wetter will be the whole year
Peter und Paul hell und klar bringt ein gutes Jahr - A light and clear Peter and Paul brings a good year" (tomorrow, the 29th)

It's in German, but there's a whole long chronological list of Bauernregeln and feast days of meteorological significance on Wikipedia.

Update on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 12:56 by Frau A

While I definitely buy into the Schafskälter as an annual phenomenon, I'm afraid that the Siebenschäfer might also work this year too.

27 June was a lovely warm sunny summer day, but supposedly the modern date (accounting for changing from Julian to Gregorian calendars) is around 7 July.

July 7 was a very strange day, mixed with hot sunny spells and cold rain and thunderstorms all in the same day. Kind of like Texas weather, except that the drop in temperature here is much more severe and it gets much colder.

I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but the weather since then has also been a strange mix, with a lot of rain. And many days that have swift changes from sun to storms and back to sun. Luckily we had almost a week of beautiful weather the week our friends from Dallas visited (the storms all were at night so didn't interfere with plans).

I'm now looking forward to the Hundestage!

Dog Days and Sheep's Cold

Perhaps it's the long agricultural tradition or maybe the environmental awareness, but the southern Bavarians are still very in touch with nature and weather patterns.  I think our parents all remember this type of knowledge, but it's beginning to be lost by our generation and the next ones as our daily lives become more and more removed from the land.  Living in Bavaria and Thailand has reminded me of many of the traditions I'd forgotten or never known, as well as taught me new ones.  And if there's one thing I've learned here is that if they've bothered to make a German word for something, it means it will happen with regularity!

Despite a couple of glorious hours of warm sun yesterday morning, it's been chilly and rainy here for the past week or two.

Every year, it's pretty similar...Warm weather comes just before Easter, in time to open the beer gardens.  It's normal that the temperature varies widely throughout the day - it's often a little chilly in mornings and evenings, even in August.  But around the 2nd week of June, it gets downright chilly and nasty. Invariably, it's just a few days after I finally give in and pack away the winter clothes and bring out summer. Luckily this year I planned ahead and left a few things out for the cold times.

In Bavaria, they call this the Schafskälter, which means Sheep's Cold. The cold snap usually ocurrs soon after the sheep are shorn, leaving them very cold and vulnerable. (apparently the lambs and ewes normally aren't shorn until after the schafskälter, as the cold can be dangerous to them). In the Austrian Alps, this can even bring snow at higher altitudes, and here in Munich hail showers are not uncommon.

There is a scientific explanation for this - in Germany and Austria, the land has warmed up, but the northern seas still are quite cold, creating a massive low pressure zone over the area. This brings cold polar air down from the northwest, and reverses the prevailing winds so that it stays here. According to the Bauernregeln.com (roughly similar to a Farmers' Almanac), this early June drop in temperature happens with 89% regularity! 

We do have the Dog Days (Die Hundestage) to look forward to in late July and August. The hottest, driest days of summer, they have been called Dog Days by the Romans, Greeks, and ancient Egyptians. Not because the dogs pant and seek shade, but because they coincided with Sirius (the Dog Star, in the Canis Major constellation) rising at the same time as the sun over the Nile and Tiber rivers.  We know today that it's a regular high pressure area that settles in, but the ancients thought that Sirius brought the weather.

So, while the Hundestage aren't uniquely German, as a good resident of Bavaria, I look forward to spending the hot days under the shade of a beer garden tree, or wading in the Isar!