March wind
As a child I recall learning an old rhyme that went something like this: “March wind, April showers, make room for the sweet May flowers.” And doing a search just now, I see that’s pretty close to the lyrics of this 1935 song. I don’t recall ever hearing it before, but someone obviously had quoted it to me:
Why am I writing about this? Well, it’s March, and the month is living up to its name. I’m still in New York and doing a lot of walking, and the wind has been chill and pretty fierce much of the time even though the temperature isn’t all that cold.
So what’s up with this “March wind” thing? I hadn’t a clue, but when I looked it up I discovered this:
… March is a transition month — obviously. We are heading out of the cold short days of winter into the longer and much warmer days of spring and summer. Cold air is situated north while warm air is trying to approach from the south.
Temperatures during the month of March are more extreme over shorter distances PLUS we have the heat of the sun finally at an angle that can actually warm up the surface quicker.
With the sun heating up the Earth’s surface, pockets of warm air form. These pockets of warm air start moving towards the cold dense air that is still hanging out, leftover from the winter months. The difference in the air mass temperatures (between the warm air and cold air) create differing pressures, which in turn create winds.
The greater the difference in the high and low pressures, the stronger the force of the winds. Also, the distance between an area of high pressure and an area of low pressure will also determine the speed of the moving air.
Question asked; question answered.
NOTE: When I was really little – and I mean maybe three or four years old – I thought that wind was generated by the moving trees. After all, I’d noticed that trees and leaves moved a lot on windy days, so it made perfect sense to me.
When I was really little I imagined that sky scrapers were tall building with wind shield wipers on top. I also remember running inside to tell my mom about an airplane that flew overhead and had no propellers. Another amazing discovery was music with no singing. Life is full of wonders.
I was trying to remember why Ruth Etting’s name was familiar. This is it. Interesting movie. I was on a Doris Day binge after she died. If I recall correctly, both Etting’s and Day’s youthful experiences with music, men, and romance were a bit similar and quite bad.
Wiki
Etting’s life was the basis for the fictionalized film, Love Me or Leave Me (1955), which starred Doris Day (as Etting), James Cagney (as Snyder) and Cameron Mitchell (as Alderman).
According to newly released files, the CIA received explicit warnings about a plot to assassinate President Kennedy months before that fateful day in Dallas. A mysterious figure named Sergyj Czornonoh sent a letter to the British Embassy in 1978, dropping a nuclear-level truth bomb: he had warned authorities about Lee Harvey Oswald’s murderous intentions all the way back in July 1963.
A significant operation, it seems, and yet just one shooter? AND no shot taken as the motorcade approached the book depository on Houston Street, but only when it turned down Elm and passed under an obstructing Texas Live Oak tree?
Possible, but not terribly plausible.
Wet sidewalks cause rain. It’s obvious.
Here in the state of Washington, it may be the first day of Spring, but it’s probably not the last day of Winter.
Taking the shot on Houston Street means the motorcade is moving across the field of fire; once on Elm, the motorcade is retreating, but with a constant angle. A much easier shot.
And STILL asking questions…
FWIW, I’ve heard of March madness and the March Hare….(and Frederic March)…
– – – – – – –
…No question, here’s a trio of astonishing links from Powerline blog:
“A savage rupturing of our civilisation;
“A new report leaves no doubt: 7 October was a hyper-violent onslaught against Jews and humanity.”—
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/20/a-savage-rupturing-of-our-civilisation/
“On Miracles, Friendship, and Faith: How I Arrived At The Inexplicable”—
https://peterhimmelman.substack.com/p/on-miracles-friendship-and-faith
+ Bonus (for fans of Evelyn Waugh):
“Evelyn Waugh’s Decadent Redemption”—
https://libertiesjournal.com/online-articles/evelyn-waughs-decadent-redemption/
I love that old music!
It’s not well-known, but premier underground comix artist, R. Crumb, who hung out with the hippies in the Haight, took acid and did the cover art for the first Janis Joplin / Big Brother album, hated modern rock and lived in a world of his huge collection of old-fashioned 78 rpm records.
—“Robert Crumb on His Insanely Heavy Record Collection”
https://stuckbetweenstations.org/2013/03/22/robert-crumb-on-his-insanely-heavy-record-collection/
Crumb is still alive at 81!
God bless.
Spring and Fall bring the greatest temperature differentials especially between the northern tier and the southern tier in the US. Storms are heat engines and all heat engines rely on the temperature differential for their overall efficiency. The greater the delta T, the more intense the storm and winds are going to be. Basic Thermodynamics.
I’m in Australia and down here the August winds are a thing. It never struck me that it was the same up north obviously with the seasons reversed.
The laws of physics run Down Under too.
April showers bring May flowers,
Mayflowers bring Pilgrims
🙂
Taking the shot on Houston Street means the motorcade is moving across the field of fire…
Yes, “across the field of fire” from the Dallas County Records building, but a straight direct shot from the book depository. After the left turn on Elm, still a clear unobstructed view from the records building with easy triangulation from the grassy knoll.
Dealey Plaza was a multiple sniper kill sack.
I once was brainstorming a JFK Assassination software game with an evil, multiple-conspiracy setup, but the devil was in the details and I feared some would find it in poor taste.
huxley @ 6:35pm,
I thought that was fairly well known amongst Crumb fans. Here he is performing some of that old time music: https://youtu.be/Lo16UUGbHiA?si=x4dlro7azsIliUo6
physicsguy @6:48pm,
We neophiles learned here on the blog just a few days ago,
“Heat is work and work is heat.”
huxley @8:27pm,
Didn’t a video game company make a first person shooter game based on a GWB motorcade assassination fantasy?
I thought that was fairly well known amongst Crumb fans.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Not a category to be confused with generally well-known. 🙂
Crumb holds up IMO as a major artist. I appreciated that art critic Robert Hughes gave Crumb that recognition.
I asked Grok about “April showers bring May flowers”.
Historical evidence suggests the phrase dates back to at least the 16th century. One key reference is Thomas Tusser’s 1557 work, “A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry,” which includes a poem with the line “Sweet April showers do spring May flowers,” aligning with the proverb’s structure (Learn English Proverbs: April Showers Bring May flowers). Additionally, a longer version, “March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers,” was recorded in 1886, further solidifying its historical presence (April shower – Wikipedia). The phrase is also referenced in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue” with the line “Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,” indicating early literary connections (April shower – Wikipedia).
Historians believe the 1610 poem containing “Sweet April showers, do spring May flowers” is another early source, reinforcing the proverb’s antiquity (Do April Showers Really Bring May Flowers? | Wonderopolis). These references collectively suggest the phrase has been part of English folklore for centuries, tied to seasonal weather patterns and agricultural cycles.
Kate on March 20, 2025 at 7:19 pm said:
“The laws of physics run Down Under too.”
Yes, but there they are upside down, and they drive on the wrong side of the road! 🙂
On Friday, our neighborhood had rain, hail, and snow within a single hour.
We always get high winds in March so we keep things tied down outside until way into summer.
I didn’t know Neo’s maxim from the song, but learned “In like a lion, out like a lamb.”
I’ve never heard it said in reverse, perhaps because March NEVER comes in like a lamb (or perhaps only in Australia.)
https://www.farmersalmanac.com/the-truth-behind-in-like-a-lion-out-like-a-lamb
Of course moving trees cause wind and wet sidewalks cause rain.
Lucy would agree.
https://stageagent.com/audition-songs/696/little-known-facts/youre-a-good-man-charlie-brown
https://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/youreagoodmancharliebrown/littleknownfacts.htm
I’d always heard something about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb and that it was in reference to the wind.
Growing up in Indiana, March was the start of tornado season. Though NOAA tells me that peak tornado season in Indiana is April though June. Interesting, now that I look it up, while we always think of “Tornado Alley” as being the really bad place for tornadoes, Alabama and Mississippi gets hit with way more E5 tornados. (I already knew that Indiana had a higher concentration of tornadoes than Oklahoma and Texas.)
My memory of the “Super Outbreak” in the seventies was that it was March, but now that I look it up, it was early April. According to Wikipedia, there were over 100 tornadoes associated with 33 tornado families, and it produced the most F4 and F5 in a single outbreak. The destruction in Xenia is something I can still picture. It was crazy. I remember years later, driving near a wooded area in the path of that tornado, that there were still damaged trees. Alive, but damaged. I thought of that when I saw the drone footage of the damage recently in Tyler, Mississippi.
There was a tiny town near us that was obliterated. Apparently, it was hit by one of the F4 tornadoes. Per Wikipedia, 70% of the town was destroyed. All I remember is that it seemed to me like the whole town was just gone…
“We neophiles learned here on the blog just a few days ago,
“Heat is work and work is heat.” ”
RTF,
Technically, no. I really dislike the term “heat”. A more precise and descriptive term is “thermal energy”. “Work” is what you get when some process, or machine, converts that thermal energy (heat) into some more useful form. The 1st Law is
dU = dQ – dW…. dU is the change in internal energy of the system, dQ is the change in “heat”, and dW is the work done. If the temperature of the system doesn’t change, then dQ=dW, but that still doesn’t mean Q is the same as W.
The 1st Law is really just conservation of energy: add up all the energies and the total doesn’t change. Of course, once you start converting energy into another form the 2nd Law raises its head…….
dU = dQ – dW
I’ve always wanted to make the “-” a “+” and dW the work done on the system rather than the work done by the system. Of course the minus has to come in somewhere, and it would show up on dV. Oh well.
@ physicsguy —
Everybody knows that DQ is Dairy Queen, and that’s not work, it’s play!
@ Lee Also > “There was a tiny town near us that was obliterated.”
I grew up in the middle of the Texas Panhandle in the sixties and spent plenty of nights in the neighbor’s cellar, even if we aren’t the “real” tornado alley.
Our town itself never got hit while I was there, but the smaller community just north of us, and essentially abutting on our city limits, was totally obliterated one year.
I had friends living there, who mercifully escaped harm, but their houses were completely gone.
I don’t think they ever bothered to rebuild the area; everyone affected just moved to our town.
The observation by a clever 3 or 4 year old that the trees waving acted as a fan to create the wind is something I have never heard of elsewhere.
For whatever reason, I never had that idea, perhaps because I had experienced wind away from trees and saw trash or smaller bushes moving, which were too small to be the sources of the forces I was feeling. [But I will say it was sobering many decades later to realize that all of those large trees that were so much older than I was at age 6 were not necessarily older than me at age (say) 66. “How did that happen??!!” ]
We apparently are born with some level of “innate physics” understanding or quickly acquire or learn certain elements of it: two objects can’t occupy the same place at the same time, can’t pass through each other, fall down if not properly balanced, etc.