Sheep's Cold and Ice Saints (weather conditions) in Germany

[charisma]

In a story I am writing (which takes place in Weimar era Germany), I want to set a scene outdoors in May or June. I've been looking at the weather singularities - Schafskälte (sheep's cold) and Eisheiligen (ice saints). Unfortunately, most of the information I am finding is in German and my language translation skills are still not very good

Comments

[lyorn]

Both affect all of Germany.

"Eisheilige": High likeliness of groundfrost in exposed places. Not in a city like Wiesbaden, though. Daytime temperature within the normal range for the season. No specific onset: Usually you don't espcially notice them until you look out of the window in the morning and say, "oh, frost", but you need to keep them in mind for gardening, agriculture, and how long to keep the winter wheels on your car.

There is a funny little thing going on with the Eisheiligen, according to German wikipedia: If you look into the actual meterological data, the weather pattern happens 9 days later than it is believed to. Which suggests that the phenomenon was observed before the Gregorian calender reform, and also that observation has not been very good since...

German wikipedia has a lot of farmer's sayings about the Eisheilige, but none about the Schafskälte.

"Schafskälte": Going on right now. Happens in four out of five or nine out of ten years. Night temperatures below 10°C, lots of rain or showers, day temperatures can be above 20°C when the sun shines, but yesterday we had overcast 12°C and heavy rain. Comes on suddenly after nice, warm early summer weather, still, if you are not aware of a pattern, you wouldn't identify it and just think "stupid weather".

Wiesbaden will be a little warmer than where I am because it's a city, it's in a river valley and protected by hills -- one of the warmest cities in Germany.

Weather in Germany is volatile enough that those two periods won't stick out to someone living in a city unless they are keeping tabs. If you are a farmer, you'll probably notice.

(edited to fix typo)