How did the ancients predict the weather?

There were three ways to predict the weather in ancient times. First, make predictions based on animal behavior; Secondly, through the production practice of farming, 24 solar terms and some agricultural proverbs are summarized; Third, according to the thickness and color of the sky and clouds.

The conditions in ancient times were limited and not as strong as the development of science and technology today. People are self-sufficient small-scale peasant economies, living on crops. To solve the problem of food and clothing, they have to rely on crops, so harvest is very important. People make simple weather forecasts through various methods. When people gradually understand that the weather has a great influence on their crops and daily life, they try to find laws from their lives, so probably in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the wisdom of the people crystallized the twenty-four solar terms. Later, according to the previous 24 solar terms and rising experience, later generations gradually produced new wisdom, such as some agricultural proverbs, such as: the autumn equinox is early, the first frost is late, and the cold dew is planting wheat at the right time.

People will also guess the weather according to some behaviors of animals on weekdays. In fact, this is also very accurate, because animals feel more keenly than humans. It is also inferred that before it rains, swallows usually fly very low, ants will climb out of holes to move, earthworms will climb out of the soil, frogs in the pond will keep barking and so on. If you get up in the morning and see a spider web with water droplets, it must be a sunny day with the sun shining high.

The ancients also summarized some strange weather phenomena according to the thickness and color of clouds. Take hail as an example. If there are black and red clouds in the sky, then this cloud is a hail cloud, which indicates that it will rain or hail soon. Also, the white clouds in the sky look like fish scales, so today must be very suitable for drying millet, because it is sunny. To sum up, it can be seen that the ancients mostly relied on the observation and summary of daily life for weather forecast.