WEATHER MYTHS SURVIVE DESPITE SCIENTISTS' SQUALLS.(Local)

Byline: Paul Grondahl Staff writer

And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and trying him asked him to show them a sign from heaven. But he answered and said unto them, It will be fair weather: for the heaven is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the heaven is red and lowering. - Matthew 16: 1-3

Up in Long Lake, Adirondackers who gather at Hosse's Country Corner Store when winter skies are heavy, gray and overcast like to take a long, deep whiff of the frosty morning air and proclaim, "Boy, I can sure smell snow this morning."

In North Creek, North Country native Jim Harvey swears by his system of predicting when it will rain in winter: Observe a frozen stream until you see water, usually with a slightly greenish tint, start to flow over the top of the ice. Then get out your umbrella.

In Voorheesville, Ken Weidman, an 82-year- old farmer who lives in the same house in which he was born, remembered this local weather saying: "If the sound of the train whistle blowing is hollow, it means snow is coming."

Move over, Punxsutawney Phil. Groundhog Day may have come and gone, but at grain and feed stores, rural diners and country taverns all over these …