Our world is a beautiful place.

For those of us who are lucky enough to escape the urban jungle of modern city life every

now and then, it's amazing just how gorgeous the natural world around us really is.

The national parks of the American West, the green, rolling, English countryside, the

glaciers and mountains of Canada, it's all breathtaking.

But that beauty sometimes steps aside to reveal something else, something more frightening.

The weather.

From tornadoes and floods to wildfires and drought, there's always a new challenge facing

humans somewhere in the world.

There's no further than the tragic, seemingly endless barrage of hurricanes we've endured

in the last few years, and it's clear that the world around us is more like a lion

than a lamb.

Beautiful, yes.

But also deadly.

All of that variety and unpredictability has left humans struggling to understand it all.

Sure, modern science has answered most of the questions for us, but for thousands of

years, it was folklore that filled in the gaps.

There are dozens of old phrases in the languages of many cultures that attempt to manage the

unmanageable.

One common example is, red sky at night, the sailors delight, red sky in morning, sailors

take warning.

Another is rain before seven, fine before eleven.

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