[trishan]

I used to do a paper route at 4 AM in the morning, and a few times I saw a complete clearing of the clouds around the moon... a perfect circle. I've been told that when you see this, that it meant rain. What really does it mean and what causes this??

[RickJ]

What you describe is not what it seems. It's just a coincidence. The moon cannot affect where clouds are... especially considering that what you saw would not be seen by someone, say, a mile or a few miles, from you.

[Capuchin]

Yep, just another case of the human mind being far too good at what it does: finding extraordinariness in the coincidental.

[TechSupport]

Yep, just another case of the human mind being far too good at what it does: finding extraordinariness in the coincidental.

And, as an added discussion on this, we tend to remember the positive coincidences, and forget the negative ones.

So we notice when our birthday falls on the same day as someone else's in the same room (positive coincidence) but we don't make note of the much more common coincidence that our birthdays differ.

We notice all the times we sleep with our windows open and catch a cold within the next few days (negative effects, but a positive coincidence) but we don't remember all the times that we slept with the window open and didn't catch a cold.

Your mind plays tricks on you all the time. How many times have you looked at the moon and seen clouds obscuring it? Thousands, probably. Now, how many times have you seen the circle of clouds that you're describing? A dozen, maybe a few dozen at most? Yet it's this that you remember, not the fact that most of the time, the clouds have nothing to do with the moon.

[ebaines]

Actually, you might all be jumping on a common band wagon that does not apply here. I think what mat be happening isn't that the clouds are actually cleared around the moon, but only that they appear to be. When the moon shines through thin, wispy clouds what you will perceive from the ground is the moon surrounded by a circle of clouds. I think what happens is that the refraction of the moonlight off the water particles causes the appearance of a rather bright halo, and so the clouds outside of that hale appear extra dark, which compounds the illusion that the clouds have cleared precisley where the moon is. The same effect occurs when you look at a streetlamp on a foggy night.

[TechSupport]

And yet, still, ebaines, the fact that it is noticed and remembered is nothing but a coincidence. And our brains like coincidences. They help us find order in our worlds. It doesn't matter what the actual reason for the cloud/moon interplay is, it's really only interesting to note that the human brain remembers it (probably because it looks "out of the ordinary") and then we forget all the times that it didn't happen and tend to think of it as a common occurrence.

[Capuchin]

Techsupport, thank you for your input, I think you might like to read this thread: https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/psychi...1-a-65452.html.

It deals with a similar topic.

[ebaines]

TechSupport - I am not disputing what you have said - the fact that people tend to remember coincidences especially well is not the issue. All I was trying to point out is that there is a physical mechanism that can cause the phenomenon that trishan asked about. Further, depending on where you live the conditions that make this happen can occur quite frequently, and so his observation may not due to any "coincidence" as RickJ and subsequent posters alluded.

[TechSupport]

TechSupport - I am not disputing what you have said - the fact that people tend to remember coincidences especially well is not the issue. All I was trying to point out is that there is a physical mechanism that can cause the phenomenon that trishan asked about. Further, depending on where you live the conditions that make this happen can occur quite frequently, and so his observation may not due to any "coincidence" as RickJ and subsequent posters alluded.

True. And I think that you'll find that walking a mile down the street will pretty much change whatever your view of the moon is, unless it's a fairly cloudless night, in which case you wouldn't see the "moon/cloud circle" in the first place.

Also, Capuchin, thanks for the "further reading" link.

The fact that human minds constantly seek to find order in an otherwise chaotic world of millions of bits of information constantly intrigues me. We see things that have no bearing on each other and link them as omens or portents or good luck signs when they are nothing more than random things that share a common element that our brain picks up on.

[Stratmando]

I do remember something about these ring or rings. Seen many times, I believe it was the moisture, and if the circle or circles(2 most I ever saw)increased in diameter, the weather was getting better. Smaller, it getteing worse. Or Viceversa.