One of the more unusual folkloric weather beliefs is that leap years have an unfavourable effect.
The Farmer’s Magazine of 1816 reports that in Scotland: “It has long been proverbial here that ‘leap year never was a good sheep year,’ an observation which this winter has been fully realized.” That year rapid changes in temperature turned the surface of the snow to ice, causing the deaths of many lambs.
An 1875 Wiltshire natural history magazine mentions the same saying as a Wiltshire proverb. The writer says that although absurd, such sayings are widely accepted, and when they do occasionally come true, they are “held up to admiring disciples as infallible weather-guides.”
In Russia, leap years are supposed to be associated with extreme weather and, as a result, premature deaths.
It was even said that beans and peas planted in a leap year would grow upside-down or sideways in their pods, perhaps in response to the supposed upside-down nature of a leap year, which allowed women to propose to men.
While some weather superstitions may have a valid basis, this one is highly doubtful. Leap years are a human invention, and are calculated differently in other calendars such as the Chinese and the Hebrew. How does nature know when a leap year occurs and when to start behaving badly?
