Strange weather today. Chilly and windy with bright sun, fabulously fluffy clouds, and spotty stormy blurs.

Down the road a bit, we ran through about five minutes of sideways rain with the sun still bright as can be. People used to say that meant the Devil was beating his wife. I wonder where that came from. (Hold on; I’ll go check.)

Well, according to Wikipedia, it’s a Southern thing, although in Tennessee, they say, “The Devil’s kissing his wife.” Hmm…

There are a lot of other devil references that go along with this “sunshower” phenomenon:

In French, the phrase is “Le diable bat sa femme et marie sa fille”[6] (i.e. “the devil is beating his wife and marrying his daughter”). In German, the variation is “Wenn’s regnet und die Sonne scheint, so schlägt der Teufel seine Großmutter: er lacht und sie weint” (i.e. “When it’s raining and the sun shines, the devil is beating his grandmother: he laughs and she cries”). The Hungarian “Az Ördög veri a feleségét” and the Piedmontese “Al diau al bat la fumna” also both translate as “the devil is beating his wife”. The lower Caribbean has a variant, “The devil and his wife are fighting for a bone”. The Brugarian variant is “The devil has thrown over his wife for a fox.” In the Netherlands people say “Het is kermis in de hel” (i.e. “There is a funfair in hell”). Wikipedia, sunshower entry

And just the word, “sunshower.” Wow. I don’t think I’d ever really heard it before. It’s blowing me away. SUNSHOWER. It’s my new favorite!!

p.s. One of my favorite singers, Chris Cornell, has a song called “Sunshower”: