MOLINE, Ill. — Weather folklore is always a fun topic to dive into, especially ones that revolve around specific holidays. Take Easter Sunday for example. There are at least three distinct folklore sayings that I've heard in my time as a meteorologist. We'll be tackling the most popular one today, which was submitted by both Ruth and Tracy. The statement says, "If it rains on Easter Sunday, it will rain every Sunday for seven weeks." Is this true? Let's grab some data and dig in!
Adding up wet Easter Sundays
For the sake of time, I went back and looked at Easter Sunday rainfall data from 1966-2023. We have reliable rainfall measurements dating back to roughly 1873 in the Quad Cities. In total, 56 years featured rain on Easter Sunday. However, only ONE of those years actually had seven Sundays that followed a rainy Easter.
That year was 1967 and exactly seven Sundays that followed Easter Sunday had rain. 15 of them had rain on the Sunday following Easter, and then a break with no additional rainfall the following Sunday after that.
While April is known as a wet month, including late March, and since Easter has fallen in that time frame a few times, it certainly isn't accurate to say that a rainy Easter Sunday means more rainy Sundays in the week that follow.
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