Today, as all devout devotees of this column will already know, is the feast day of St Luke. The writer of the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles is regarded by those reckoned competent to judge such matters to be by far the most literary of the four Evangelists.
He practised medicine in Antioch until he developed a close relationship with Paul, whom he then accompanied on many of the latter's journeys. Luke died a bachelor in Bithnia at the age of 74, and his importance to meteorology lies in his "summer" which, confusingly, occurs in the middle of the autumn.
It is very common for a spell of quiet settled anti-cyclonic weather to occur in autumn. Sooner or later, almost every year, the normal procession of eastward-moving depressions is interrupted for a time and a short-lived cell of high pressure develops over western and northern Europe; it is a sort of encore that even the most mediocre summer cannot quite resist - a welcome respite that occurs with sufficient regularity for it to have become a feature of many countries' folklore.
Nowadays, we call a spell like this an "Indian Summer", but in olden times it was linked to the nearest date of consequence on the Church's calendar. If, for example, the anticyclone happened to establish itself in very early autumn, it became "St Michael's Summer", linked to his feast day on September 29th.
"All Hallow's Summer" - or "All Saints' Rest" as they like to call it up in Scandinavia - was a fine spell coinciding with All Saints' Day on November 1st, while "St Martin's Summer" was believed to start on his feast day on November 11th.
And a period of fine weather around this time of year is associated with the feast of Luke on October 18th and becomes "St Luke's Summer". As it happens, Luke's friend, Paul, has also been given associations with the weather. January 25th is the feast of his Conversion, recalling the dramatic events which overtook his alter ego, Saul of Tarsus, going to Damascus, and which moved him to change, not only his lifestyle, but also his name.
The heavens, it seems, have signs to offer all of us on that January day:
If St Paul's day be faire and cleare
It doth betide a happy year;
But if by chance it then should rain,
It will make dear all kinds of grain.
If the clouds make dark the skie,
The neate and fowles this year shall die;
If blustering winds do blow aloft,
Then wars shall trouble the realm full oft.