Weather man sheds no tears over onion 'forecast’

By Randy Dockendorf
 Yankton Press and Dakotan
  SCOTLAND (AP) — When Ken Peters predicts the coming year’s precipitation, he’s moved to tears.
 That’s because the Scotland man uses an onion for his prognostication. He divides the onion into sections, puts salt on each section and then ‘‘reads’’ the prediction for upcoming moisture.
 ‘‘With the onions, sometimes I cry,’’ he said with a chuckle. ‘‘I guess I could cut them up under water.’’
 Peters has performed the annual ritual for 15 years. He started the event when he farmed near Wagner and has continued it since he retired and moved to Scotland in 2006.
 ‘‘It’s a Bohemian or Czech thing. There are a lot of Czechs in the Wagner area, and they try to keep (the onion forecast) going,’’ he said. ‘‘A lady showed me how to do it, and I have been doing it since 1996.’’
 However, Peters said he feels like a novice compared to some practitioners. ‘‘I saw a column in the Freeman paper from a guy who was already doing this back in the 1930s,’’ he said.
 The readings are traditionally performed as part of the Christmas holiday, Peters said.
 ‘‘The lady who got me started said you set up an onion on Christmas Eve, around 4 p.m.,’’ he said. ‘‘You put salt on the onion (sections), then go to church or just let it set for a couple of hours. Then you look at the onion.’’
 However, Peters departs from the usual tradition, performing his reading as he ushers in the New Year.
 Peters follows one cardinal rule. ‘‘I don’t read the Farmer’s Almanac before I do the onion, because I don’t want it to color my predictions,’’ he said.
 Peters demonstrated his surgical skill with the onion, which is sometimes so strong it bites back.
 As he started, Peters performed the task in meticulous fashion. There was nothing haphazard or left to chance — even in selecting the onion itself. He prefers a larger onion to provide adequately sized sections for the ‘‘forecast.’’
 ‘‘It should be a South Dakota onion. It can be any color onion — white, yellow, purple,’’ he said.
 Peters finds others willing to provide the onion for each year’s task.
 ‘‘I don’t have room for a garden now that I live in town, so a neighbor lady gives me purple and white onions,’’ he said. ‘‘This year, it was a yellow onion that originally came from Greenwood Colony (near Delmont).’’
 Dr. Morris Schuurmans of Wagner, a retired optometrist, provided onions for years, Peters said.
 Schuurmans has held more than a passing interest in the weather experiment. He and his wife, Margarette, were honored by the National Weather Service (NWS) in 2006 for their contributions to the NWS volunteer cooperative weather observer program.
 Peters also serves as an NWS weather observer. However, he jokingly notes the onion reading isn’t part of his official forecast.
 Once the onion has been chosen, Peters cuts his ‘‘patient’’ vertically down the middle.
 ‘‘You take it apart very carefully,’’ he said. ‘‘You handle it gently, and it opens up like an artichoke.’’
 Peters divides the onion into a dozen parts, with each representing a month. He spreads the sections onto a tray.
 ‘‘You put the two outside, largest sections in opposite corners of the tray. One represents January, and the other one December,’’ he said. ‘‘You keep doing that until you have three rows, with the corresponding sections facing each other.’’
 Each section forms a cup, with Peters placing a half-teaspoon or teaspoon of table salt in each cup.
 When it comes to finding out the onion’s forecast, Peters literally peels away each layer.
 ‘‘You want to leave intact the onion skin that divides each section,’’ he said. ‘‘If the onion skin is off, then the salt gets directly on the onion.’’
 After two hours, Peters checks the salt on each section. If the salt remains dry, the corresponding month will see below-normal precipitation. If the salt becomes wet and cakes into a small ball, that month will see above-normal moisture.
 So what does the forecast hold for 2010? Look for a drier year, Peters said.
 ‘‘During the first five months, the forecast is for below-normal precipitation,’’ he said. ‘‘For June, July and August, it will be above normal. Then it alternates (for the remainder of the year).’’
 How did the onion perform in 2009? Actually, pretty well, allowing for a hailstorm during the year that seemed to upset the conditions and make things ‘‘topsy-turvy,’’ Peter said.
 The weather rebounded in time to turn around this past year’s crops, Peters said.
 ‘‘We had predicted a wet August, and it brought back crops that were damaged by hail,’’ he said. ‘‘The beans weren’t looking good the 5th of July, but we ended up getting 20 or 30 bushels an acre. It’s not great, but it’s better than we thought it would be.’’
 Then came the onion’s prediction that December 2009 would turn into a wet month.
 ‘‘I played golf on Nov. 30, and I could have played Dec. 1 (at the Scotland course) if they hadn’t already shut down the greens,’’ Peters said. ‘‘Then, on Dec. 2, it went to snowy and cold. It went from summer to winter, just like that.’’
 Even with that snowy blast, Peters wasn’t ready for the final outcome — the historic Christmas blizzard.
 ‘‘We had the forecast that December would be wet and chilly, but we didn’t forecast 40 inches of snow,’’ he said.
 So far, 2010 has been right on track for the onion, with January relatively dry, Peters said.
 Peters has gained notoriety with the onion forecast.
 ‘‘One year, I was driving school bus and the kids would ask, ’What did the onion say for October?’ ’’ he said. ‘‘Well, it said record-breaking moisture. But it was the 26th of October, and there still wasn’t any rain. Then it really cut loose, and we got 3 to 4 inches. I was surprised yet grateful.’’
 Peters has worked with the weather his entire life, attending meteorological school in the Navy. After his military discharge, he helped form a private weather service that provided forecasts for six Dallas radio stations. The service opened a branch office in Cleveland, where he quickly learned about lake-effect snow.
 Peters eventually returned to South Dakota, where he became an NWS volunteer weather observer. In 1992, he began writing a weather column for the weekly newspapers in Wagner and Lake Andes. He still writes for those papers, adding the Scotland weekly when he moved to his current home.
 Peters gained more notoriety when his son, Dan — who was announcing for Yankton radio station WNAX at the time — would call the elder Peters for on-air weather tidbits.
 However, nothing seems to match the popularity of the onion, Ken Peters said. He jokingly noted, ‘‘It’s not all computer models and graphics’’ in forecasting the weather.
 Peters admits the onion isn’t scientific, but he can’t explain the results.
 ‘‘You would think it should be right about 50 percent of the time,’’ he said. ‘‘But when I look back over the years, it’s been 75 to 80 percent accurate. There must be some merit.’’
 No matter what the onion says, Peters knows one outcome with certainty.
 ‘‘I’m an old German, and I make use of everything. After we are done with the onion, we like to use it on top of hot dogs and hamburgers,’’ he said. ‘‘After this last forecast, we put the onion on a pot of chili. Mr. Onion went to a good home.’’