Sask. pig spleen weather prognosticator carries on family tradition
CBC
Jeff Woodward isn't a meteorologist, but he has prepared a forecast for the rest of winter and spring that has some flavour.
Woodward uses pig spleens to determine temperature and precipitation trends for six-month periods. He spreads their fat onto a large piece of cardboard on his dining room table and traces them with a marker.
He said the patterns they form tell the weather story for the next half year.
"Each one of these veins of fat, they actually show where there's a rainfall or snowfall event going to happen," Woodward remarked as he split the traced fat into six even sections, representing the months from January to June.
The tradition dates back hundreds of years to rural Sweden, where Woodward's ancestors believed pigs could predict what kind of winter their farm could expect.
A pig would be butchered, and its spleen read by family and friends — with a shot of alcohol sometimes involved.
The ritual continued when the family immigrated to Canada more than 100 years ago.
Woodward learned the practice from his uncle, Gus Wickstrom, who was well-known in Saskatchewan, and even internationally, for his pig spleen weather prognostications.
Wickstrom claimed a spleen's forecast accuracy rate was beyond 90 per cent. Woodward said many of his predictions — no matter how obscure — came true.
"He predicted a snowfall, I don't remember the year … in June, that was sort of really far out, and it actually happened," said Woodward.
Wickstrom said the spleen could be used for more than just weather forecasting — claiming it could even reverse baldness, by wrapping it around a person's head.
He would often take a bite of the spleen when preparing a forecast. A few mouthfuls, he said, could act as an aphrodisiac.
Woodward was a longtime pig spleen protegé, as his uncle leaned into the tradition during his retirement in the late 1990s. But he became the official prognosticator when Wickstrom died in 2007.
Since then, he's been invited to speak at events and is frequently updating the spleen forecast Facebook page, where more than 6,000 followers patiently await the next forecast.
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