Saxby's Weather System

Saxby's Weather System was publised in 1864. The author, Stephen Martin Saxby, presented his case for lunar influence on earthly weather. He summed things up in the following words:

"I found that the moon never crosses the earth's equator or reaches her poisition of stitial colure (maximum declination north or south of the equator), without a marked disturbance of the atmosphere occurring at the same period."

What kind of weather did Saxby expect when the moon reached theses key positions? "...such changes most commonly are accompanied either by strong winds, gales, sudden frosts, sudden thaw, sudden calms, or other certain interruptions of the weather, according to the season."

Saxby realized that this "key" was just part of the weather picture and could not pinpoint the places where such weather phenomena would take place when he stated "It is too much to expect of me that I can define the terrestrial limits of any results which at certain times may present themselves under lunar influences...All I can do at present (or at least all I at present feel justified in declaring, with some exceptions) is that certain periods named in my lists will be times of change."

Saxby considered that these atmospheric changes could take place over a four day period i.e. the day before, the day during, and until two days after the aforementioned lunar positions.

Of course, we know that much more goes into forming our weather than that, but Saxby was on to something. It seems that powerful weather systems are somehow linked to these times. Out of curiosity, I picked the dates of some major storms and hurricanes and checked the lunar positions. All of them coincided with Saxby's allowable window of influence. Here they are:

Hurricane Andrew
August 24, 1992
Moon at maximum north declination on August 22 1992

Hurricane Katrina
August 29, 2005
Moon at maximum north declination on August 28, 2005

Tsunami
December 26, 2004
Moon at maximum north declination and at Full Moon December 26, 2004

Blizzard of '93
March 12-13, 1993
Moon at maximum south declination on March 14, 1993

Hurricane Wilma pounds the Yucatan Peninsula
October 21-23, 2005
Moon at maximum north declination October 22, 2005