Weather reports have been a part of newspapers forever. Usually they’re just numbers, but in the fall of 1907 The Vancouver Daily Province tried something different: Weather Predictions by “The Crow.” Read More
Funny, puzzling and unique, The Crow gave Vancouverites weather advice for two months
Funny, puzzling and unique, The Crow gave Vancouverites weather advice for two months
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Weather reports have been a part of newspapers forever. Usually they’re just numbers, but in the fall of 1907 The Vancouver Daily Province tried something different: Weather Predictions by “The Crow.”
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It ran near the bottom of Page 8, a space then usually reserved for thoughtful editorials on weighty matters like “A Civic Milk Farm” and “Australian Irrigation.”
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The format was a small illustration of a crow cawing out his prediction in a speech bubble. According to the crow on Oct. 4, 1907, it would be a “Pleasant Day.”
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Sunrise
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Just in case readers didn’t get the message, “Fair” was written across the crow’s black body.
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There was no report from the metrological office in Victoria predicting the actual temperature, barometric pressure or chance of rain. Just a cartoon drawing of a crow dispensing advice.
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The Province was a pretty serious paper in 1907, but somehow a cartoonist named Stanley convinced owner/publisher Walter Nichol to go with the crow, which probably drew a chuckle from readers.
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Cartoonist Stanley had fun with his creation. There were different drawings for different weather, and drawings that left you wondering what kind of weather he was referring to.
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For a “Cloudy” prediction, the crow was shown flapping their wings up into the clouds. For “Rain,” the crow opined “I don’t care,” and looked thoroughly disinterested.
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But the crow looked perturbed in another cartoon, where he drooled or sweated, and asked “Where’s the fellow that said we wouldn’t have any summer?” Presumably this meant it was hot, even though it ran Oct 8.
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Readers also had to do some guesswork on the Sept. 26 illustration, which featured a big-eyed crow huddling on a wire and the message “Daddy fill up the coal bin!” Presumably this meant it would be cold.
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Cold was also hinted at in the first crow illustration on Sept. 12, 1907, “A light blanket on my bed tonight.” Lord knows what readers thought — there seems to have been no explanation about the column, it just appeared.
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Some of the crow illustrations are simple jokes, like Sept. 18’s cartoon of a diving crow that reads “I’m falling like the barometer.” How many people understood what impact a falling barometer had on the weather, though?
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