How to Predict the Weather With an Onion: The Onion Calendar
Quick Reference
- The method: The Onion Calendar, a German folk tradition for predicting monthly moisture.
- When to do it: Between 11 p.m. and 12 a.m. on New Year’s Eve.
- What you need: A round well-formed onion, a teaspoon of salt per cup, a knife.
- How to read: Wetter salt = wetter month; dry salt = dry month.
- Carried by: Donna and Delbert Eszlinger of Ashley, North Dakota, featured each year in The Ashley Tribune.
Did you know you can predict the weather with an onion? The Onion Calendar is a time-honored German folk method for forecasting moisture levels month by month for the year ahead. It does not predict storms, hail, or blizzards. It predicts how wet or dry each month is likely to be. All it takes is one good onion, a teaspoon of salt, a knife, and an hour on New Year’s Eve.
Donna and Delbert Eszlinger of Ashley, North Dakota, swear by this tradition and honor it every New Year’s Eve. The Ashley Tribune reports on their onion calendar reading each year, and it remains one of the paper’s most popular stories. Ashley is a tight-knit German Russian community in the heart of southcentral North Dakota, steeped in tradition.
“It’s a German tradition that’s been carried on from grandparents and great grandparents,” Donna told the Tribune. “That’s how they predicted the weather years ago and we kind of follow along with the old German traditions because we enjoy doing it, and because there was some truth to those things.”
How To Make an Onion Forecast (Onion Calendar)
- Choose a well-formed, round onion. A medium yellow or white storage onion works best.
- Cut it in half lengthwise. Through the stem, not through the equator.
- Peel apart the layers in each half. You should have 12 small cup-shaped layers in total, six per half.
- Assign each layer a month. One half represents January through June, working outermost layer to innermost. The other half represents July through December, also outermost to innermost. So the outermost layer of half A is January, and the outermost layer of half B is July.
- Put a teaspoon of salt in each of the 12 layer cups.
- Do this between 11 p.m. and 12 a.m. on New Year’s Eve. Set the layers somewhere safe on the counter overnight.
- Read the salt on New Year’s morning. Cups where the salt is wet, clumpy, or pooling with liquid indicate a wet month. Cups where the salt is still dry indicate a dry month. Cups in between forecast average moisture.
- Record the reading. Write each month’s result on the calendar. Check back through the year.
Why Does the Onion Method Work?
The mechanism is not mystical. Onions are made mostly of water. The cup-shaped layers absorb humidity from the air at different rates depending on the moisture content of the kitchen during the overnight reading window. Salt is hygroscopic, meaning it pulls water from the air and the onion alike. The cups that draw the most moisture by morning are the ones where the layer was wettest, which farmers and folk readers came to correlate with the moisture pattern of the matching month.
Is the correlation real? Scientific evidence is thin. The Eszlingers themselves are honest about this. The calendar does not forecast severe weather; it forecasts moisture trend. For an agricultural community in a string of dry North Dakota years, even a rough moisture read for the year ahead has practical value when you are deciding what to plant, when to break ground, or how much hay to keep in reserve.
Where the Tradition Comes From
The Onion Calendar is older than the United States. Variations are recorded in German farming communities going back to at least the 16th century, with parallel traditions in Slavic and Russian villages. Twelve onion layers for twelve months, set out on the longest night turn of the year, was a way to plan the coming year before any meteorologist or almanac existed. When German Russian families migrated to the American Great Plains in the 1880s and 1890s, they brought the calendar with them. Ashley, North Dakota, is one of the places it never stopped being practiced.
Other Onion Weather Signs Worth Knowing
- “Onion skins very thin, mild winter coming in. Onion skins thick and tough, coming winter cold and rough.” An old Appalachian rhyme that uses the same principle: the plant’s response to the prior growing season previews the season ahead.
- Crying when slicing. Particularly pungent onions tend to come from drier growing seasons. Mild onions often follow wetter summers.
- Bulbs ripening early in fall. Old farmers read this as an early-winter sign.
Does It Actually Work?
The Almanac is honest with readers about folklore. Hard science behind the Onion Calendar is limited. What we can say is this: the method has been carried for at least 400 years by farming families who had real economic skin in the game. It has lived this long because it was useful often enough to be worth doing. Try it on New Year’s Eve. Record the result on a kitchen calendar. Compare it to actual rainfall through the year. Then decide what you think.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the Onion Calendar predict?
Monthly moisture levels for the year ahead. It does not forecast severe weather, hail, or blizzards. It tells you whether each month is likely to be wet, dry, or average.
When do you make an onion forecast?
Between 11 p.m. and 12 a.m. on New Year’s Eve. You read the salt-filled onion layers the next morning, on New Year’s Day.
Which onion layer represents which month?
Cut the onion in half lengthwise. One half covers January through June, outermost layer to innermost. The other half covers July through December, also outermost to innermost. So the outermost layers of each half represent January and July, respectively.
Where does the Onion Calendar come from?
German and Slavic farming communities, with records going back to at least the 16th century. The tradition came to the American Great Plains with German Russian settlers in the 1880s and 1890s. Donna and Delbert Eszlinger of Ashley, North Dakota, carry it forward today.
Is there science behind the onion method?
The mechanism, salt pulling moisture from humid onion layers, is real. Whether that maps to the actual moisture pattern of each month is the open question. Scientific evidence is thin. The tradition has persisted across 400 years because it was useful often enough to remember.
Can I use any onion?
Choose a round, well-formed, medium-sized yellow or white storage onion. The shape matters more than the variety. You want clean, intact layers you can peel apart and fill with salt.
Sabrina Hornung
Sabrina Hornung is a journalist and artist based in Lehr, North Dakota. She serves as editor-in-chief for the High Plains Reader, was the former editor for the Ashley Tribune/Wishek Star, and has contributed to the international folk art publication “Raw Vision.”
My grandmother did this every New Years Day, as did her parents before her. I have been carrying on the tradition since she passed in 2021.
So to make sure that I understand . . .
1. slice the onion
2. peel a layer from each onion, six from each side representing Jan – Jun and Jul – Dec
3. place salt on the inner part of the peeled onion
4. place on the window seal between 11 p.m. – next morning
5. dry layers mean little to no moisture for those layers and moisture for some to maybe a lot wetness for those months.
How do you determine. Which half is Jan-June and which half is July-Dec?
I’d love to see this re-posted in December – not sure I’ll remember by then. It would be neat to give it a try!
What do you do if your onion does not have enough layers ?
Be sure to use a big one! Some say even larger than a fist. Good luck!
My Iowa parents were dairy farmers up until this past year. They have been doing the Christmas version for 50 years. And the onions were 75 percent accurate for their area. My dad passed in April so I’ve been asked to take over the tradition for the family.
Wow! Thank you for sharing your family’s story. We are so glad to hear it was successful (and sorry to hear about your father’s passing). Be sure to come back and tell us how it goes. ?
I would really like to see a picture of the cut onions with the salt in them. Thank you.
Hi Bill, There is a photo in the story provided by the writer. If you look closely, you can see the salt in each of the onion layers.
It sounds like a fun activity to do with children. I might be game to try it for fun
Great, let us know how it turns out. Take pictures!