HOLY MACKEREL!

Riding home from  Chillicothe on Monday evening, Gerald exclaimed, "Wow, look at that sky!"  The clouds were shades of pink, purple, and turquoise with rippling striations.  I told him, "It's a mackerel sky;  they're supposed to resemble fish scales."   I told him that a mackerel sky is supposed to be an indicator of weather change and it's usually rain.

I repeated the couplets my mother used to say:

"mackerel in the sky,
three days dry"

"mackerel sky, mackerel sky,
never long wet, never long dry"

I asked, "Have you heard of buttermilk sky?"  He said that he had (naturally, I began singing Ole Buttermilk Sky;  listen below to the composer Hoagy Carmichael's version).

I told him, "Buttermilk sky is the same as mackerel sky;  it's called that because of the curdled look of the clouds."

He said, "Well, I've seen a mackerel and I've seen buttermilk and they don't look the same."

I guess it's poetic license.