Japan: the little paper monks
Japanese children hang teru teru bōzu — small white paper or cloth dolls — in windows to ask for fine weather, especially before school trips and sports days. Hang it right side up for sun; upside down, in some regions, for rain.
It is one of the world's most charming weather petitions, and proof that the impulse behind this entire website is neither new nor local.
Europe: saints, bells and buried saints
France watches Saint Medard's day in June: if it rains, the saying goes, it will rain for forty days — the French twin of England's St Swithin. In parts of rural Europe, statues of saints were carried round fields, and in some places, threatened with a dunking if the weather failed to improve.
Church bells were rung against hail and lightning from the Alps to the Pyrenees. Europe's weather religion was always half negotiation, half argument.
The Americas and the Pacific
Groundhog Day — the surviving American branch of the old Candlemas weather divination — still draws crowds every February to watch a marmot predict the spring. In Hawaii, rain is blessed: ua is a gift, and a rainbowed, drizzling day is no misfortune at all.
Many Pacific traditions treat wind and rain as ancestors or persons to be addressed by name — politely, and with respect for what they can do.
What they all have in common
Strip away the differences and every weather superstition does the same three things: it names the weather, it asks politely, and it gives the waiting somewhere to go. The doll in the window, the bell in the tower and the petition on this site are one idea in three costumes.
Nobody in any of these traditions believed the sky was a machine to be operated. They believed it was a neighbour to be asked. That is still the whole craft.
Borrowing a tradition for your event
If a weather charm belongs to your own heritage, use it with pride. If it belongs to a living tradition that isn't yours, admire it and choose a custom of your own — or invent one. New folklore is allowed; every old custom was new once.
A candle in the window the night before, a wish said aloud at sunset, a free petition sent to a weather witch: the form matters less than the asking.