WEATHER FOLKLORE: "Catchy drawer and sticky door, Coming rain will pour and pour" APPLICABILITY: Just about anywhere heavy rain can occur ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION: The "stickiness" occurs due to high humidity. Heavy rain needs plenty of low level moisture to fuel the storms. High dewpoints along with a high relative humidity are needed to create the stickiness. With a very sticky airmass, a lifting mechanism will be able to generate heavy rain. Notice the lore refers to the rain as "pouring". This pouring fits heavy convective rainfall in maritime tropical airmasses. If no lifting mechanisms are in place, the weather can be very sticky for many days without rain occurring. The lore mentions "coming rain"- thus the rain may not come. The lore is saying that if the rain does come, it will be very heavy. You may have seen these statues that change color (such as red being rain and blue being fair weather) or gauges that point to either (fair, changing, or stormy). These devices are simply based upon relative humidity. The logic behind the devices is the higher the relative humidity the more likely rain is. PITFALLS: See link below for the relative humidity vs. rain misassociation: http://theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/270/index.html |