We have all heard the old adage, “If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb.” If you are like me, you’ve heard it applied this year over and over both in that traditional form and its reverse.
Generally we take these things for granted; it’s just small talk, a way to politely engage usually in brief casual encounters with strangers or occasional acquaintances.
Being a bit of a language nerd—perhaps ‘bit’ is a bit of an understatement—I like to get down in the weeds with these.
Like many such a phrase, the origins of this are murky. Some sources I consulted trace it to 16th century Wales and note it was more frequently applied to April, Wales being a northern nation.
Others say it is a Pennsylvanian invention, and for that latitude, it is likely pretty accurate most of the time.
In any event, none of the references include the conditional ‘if’ at the beginning. It is simply “March (or April) comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb,” which is a poetic way of stating the obvious that March is the month in which winter transitions to spring.
Also, I could not find any etymology for the way we use the idiom in Canada, which is to apply in it both ways. If March comes in like a lion it will go out like a lamb, but, if it comes in like a lamb, it will go out like a lion.
This brings up all kinds of contortions of motivated reasoning, selective memory and confirmation bias.
I participated in one of these friendly exchanges earlier last week. The other participant was anticipating the month going out like a lion, but as I recalled the first week of March was when we had our worst winter storm 2016-2017, indicating it should go out like a lamb.
“But March first was nice,” she replied?
The first question that brings up is what time frame constitutes coming in and going out. I’ve always taken it to mean the first few and last few days, but clearly this woman had a more strict definition.
Also, was the first really nice? As I recall—and was backed up by historical data from Environment Canada—March 1, 2017 was pretty cold (low -20, high -10, which is below seasonal) and windy. Is sunny enough to be considered a lamb?
And what constitutes a lion? Can it just be cold, or do we need a storm?
In any event, it does not matter because the saying is just a saying. There is no statistical evidence of it as a predictor of weather except to say, depending on where you live in the world, it is probably going to be warmer at the end of March than at the beginning.
And how could there be any statistical evidence, really, when we can’t even agree on what constitutes the timeframe of in and out, much less what is required to make the weather lamb- or lion-like.
Finally, even if we could agree on all of this stuff, we would ignore the evidence anyway, because we’re human.
For my erstwhile acquaintance, if this month goes out like a lion, the adage is confirmed and the year more likely to be recalled. If not, it is an anomalous year and easily discarded in the analysis.
It is interesting how convoluted these things tend to get over time. What was a statement of tedious obviousness, again depending on where you live, becomes something almost magical. Of course, there are very few of us who actually believe them. They are akin to “cold enough for ya?” or “how about those Roughriders?”
And that, is a good thing.
