In rural Missouri, there are many tales, sayings and folklore about the state’s weather.
“The darker the woolly worm, the worse the winter.”
“Red sky in morning, sailors take warning; Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”
"Crickets chirp more when it's warmer."
Well, it turns out that last one is based on scientific fact, not just colloquial observations.
“I actually had to learn how to do this in school,” said Emily Althoff, an urban entomologist for University of Missouri Extension and Lincoln University, “And we were told it was going to be on an exam, and so, we had to learn how to calculate cricket chirps to temperature.”
Dolbear’s law was established in 1897 and shows the relationship between ambient air temperature and how often snowy tree crickets chirp.
She said the cricket chirp comes from the insect rubbing their wings together, and the warmer the temperatures outside, the more flexible the insect's muscles are – leading to more frequent chirps.
"Weather impacts our lives in certain ways, but it also impacts the lives of the pets, the animals all around us."Tim Brice, National Weather Service
“And I think that's crazy that we're able to calculate something so niche from an organism that is just kind of jumping around in our fields and ecosystems,” Althoff said.
While the specific formula is a little more complex, the best way to estimate the temperature in Fahrenheit based on crickets is to count the number of chirps in 15 seconds and add 40.
But Althoff said there are some limitations to the formula. It was derived from the chirps of only one cricket species, the snowy tree cricket. Plus, the law cannot be used if the temperature is less than 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Tim Brice, a senior meteorologist for the National Weather Service in El Paso, created a tool years ago for people called the "Cricket Chirp Convertor.”
He said people can enter the number of chirps they hear and have the temperature automatically calculated into Fahrenheit, Celsius and Kelvin.
“We know that weather impacts our lives in certain ways, but it also impacts the lives of the pets, the animals all around us,” Brice said. “Whether it's the large herd animals like cows and horses or the pets, the cats and dogs in our houses, or even the birds and the crickets and the insects that are living out in the wild.”
Brice added that he had a second goal in mind when creating the convertor – he wanted to show people that meteorologists are people, too.
“I think it's something fun, something for people to talk about,” Brice said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Education published an article in 2022 entitled, “Can crickets tell the temperature? The answer is in their chirp!,” which provides individuals with step-by-step guidance on collecting their own cricket chirp data to calculate a more specific formula for their location.
