Word: swithin
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...eleven centuries, the superstitious have believed that if rain fell on St. Swithin's Day (July 15), rain would thereafter fall for 40 days; and vice versa. This year's dry St. Swithin's Day was followed by an Eastern drought, with crops burning in four States...
People of the East last week muttered about St. Swithin because it had rained in a few places along the Atlantic Coast on his Day (July 15),* and on day after day thereafter the skies opened, the clouds burst and most of the East from Maine to Georgia was drenched to sogginess. Meteorologists explained that a "cold front" had merely come to a halt at seaboard, meeting warm, moist airs from the sea. This knowledge "was small comfort to marooned motorists in New Jersey, stalled train commuters in New York, flooded manufacturers in Pennsylvania, growers of damaged tobacco in Connecticut...
Across the South into Texas and Oklahoma went St. Swithin's trouble. The San Saba River (southwest Texas) flooded an area 100 miles long, 50 miles wide, making ranchers swim for their lives, when 14 inches of rain fell in a week...
...days, 17,000 acres of National Forests had burned and thousands more burn every day. Near Ryderwood, Wash., 35.000 acres of timber went up. Dry electric storms were the main cause, but in some cases miscreants were suspected of making jobs for themselves as fire fighters. On St. Swithin's Day alone, electric storms had started 200 fires in northern Idaho and western Montana. Klamath, Trinity, Siskiyou and Columbia National Forests were all on fire. Smoke hung over the high Sierras as far as Reno. Nev. It blinded forest lookouts, prevented them from spotting new outbreaks. Ships in Puget...
...Swithin, a Bishop of Winchester who died July 2, 862, was moved to a shrine in 971 on July 15, He had asked to be buried "exposed to passing feet and rain falling from...