Weather Prophet Brady’s White Christmas predictions

The long-range forecast for the winter’s first storm was moved up, bolstering hopes for a white Christmas.

“Weather Prophet Brady says a heavy snowstorm will be due on Dec. 20 instead of Dec. 28,” The Morning Star of Glens Falls reported on Oct. 2, 1894. “The reputation of Prophet Brady is at stake in this matter, and it is well to have the dates definitely fixed,”

A White Christmas was in doubt, and even the birds were confused.

“The weather Monday was somewhat similar to that of the month of March instead of the week preceding the holiday season, and the people who had recently tried to make sleighing were forced to abandon their vehicles — on runners — and plough their way through mud,” the Salem correspondent reported in The Granville Sentinel on Dec. 21, 1894. “Robins were seen and heard in the town this week by responsible persons, and, if we are to believe the signs of the times, certainly these sweet harbingers of spring would not be without their significant predictions of mild weather. The Chronicles of Salem state that this is almost an unprecedented occurrence in this locality at this season of the year.”

A White Christmas was doubtful at Fort Edward, too.

“If this weather continues, the only place to have a Christmas sleighride will be over the driving course on the canal, which will no doubt be in condition by tomorrow,” the Fort Edward correspondent reported in The Morning Star on Dec. 24.

In other White Christmas news collected from historic newspapers of the region:

1887

“Weather Prophet Brady’s most recent prediction is to the effect that the snow now on the ground will disappear before Christmas,” The Morning Star reported on Dec. 21. “He stakes his reputation as a prophet on this assertion and advises all to take their holiday sleigh rides at once.”

1892

“If Christmas on a Tuesday be, the first of winter hard shall be, with frost and snow, and with great flood. But the end there of shall be good, again, the summer shall be good also,” The Granville Sentinel reported on Jan. 1.

1879

It had been doubtful, but now more certain that there would be a white Christmas.

“The weather clerk seems inclined to usher in the holidays on snow, if not snowshoes, this being the third attempt,” the Crown Point Centre correspondent to the Elizabethtown Post & Gazette reported on Dec. 22. “And this time being aided by excruciating cold weather, he seems likely to succeed in spite of Old Sol, whose been smiling on us for several weeks past.”

1878

Santa Claus was not the only one hoping for good sleighing weather.

“Teamsters are not generally a praying class of people, but many of them are praying for snow just now,” the Mineville correspondent reported in the Ticonderoga Sentinel on Dec. 20.

“It would seem that we are destined not to have a white Christmas for our snow has all been carried away with the rain,” the Sentinel reported on Dec. 13.

“The cloudy weather still continues, but occasionally the sun peeps through. We have had many snow days, but we fear that our Christmas sleigh ride will be on wheels again this year,” the Saranac Lake correspondent reported on Dec. 20.

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