Weatherman

The weather frog is a tree frog that is or was assumed to be able to predict the weather in an actually inaccurate way.

Weatherman in a glass, etching after a painting by Hans Pöck, from Die Gartenlaube (1887)

The myth of the weather frog goes back to the observation that European tree frogs in particular climb plants close to the ground in sunny weather, whereby the special training of their toes is useful for them. This behavior can be explained by the fact that the insects that serve as food fly higher in warm weather than in cold weather.

This behavior gave rise to the mistaken idea that the frog could not only display the weather, but even predict it. In earlier times, the frogs were locked in glasses with a small ladder inside. If the frog climbed the ladder, that meant good weather; if it stayed down, then bad weather was to be assumed. This “weather station”, without being taken seriously, has been preserved to this day as a distinctive cliché that is taken with humor .

In a derisive broadcast, meteorologists or male weather moderators are sometimes referred to as weather frogs , while female weather moderators in media jargon are referred to as weather fairies .

Weather forecasting skills were also attributed to spiders, leeches (as so-called storm forecasters ) and swallows, whereby the belief went so far that one wanted to deduce the weather in a certain hour over a week later from certain observations of the animals.