July 11th 2019
What’s the matter with this weather? We have rain yet again. Are the weather gods angry with us? Is it climate change? To find an answer we bought the Enkhuizer Almanac, which has been in print since 1595. Almanacs like these were commonplace in the past. It was one of the few means of information people had about religious festivities, dates for markets and advise on the right time to do certain things like sowing or harvesting your crops. The oldest complete almanac found is the Babylonian almanac, dating back to 1500 BC. The Greek had them as well and the practice survived through the ages. In early medieval times the first ‘modern’ almanacs appeared, and some like the Enkhuizer Almanak have survived till this day.
The contemporary Enkhuizer almanac has the usual calendar with all the festivities, moon phases, and tide tables, but it also gives a prediction for the weather that year. Turns out it wasn’t angry weather gods or climate change. The almanac had already predicted a cool summer. So they’re sort of right, although they might have forgotten to mention the rain.