Barometers Realm

A humorous French variation on the widespread novelty “weather barometer” postcard, using an animal’s tail as a deliberately absurd meteorological indicator.

The card depicts a cheerful cow with a genuine textile tail attached directly to the printed image. The user is invited to hang or observe the card outdoors and interpret the state of the tail according to a simple set of rules: violent movement means storm, gentle movement light breeze, a dry tail fine dry weather, an invisible tail fog, a stiff tail frost or snow, and a wet tail rain.

As with the earlier American Mule Barometer, the joke depends on obvious circular reasoning. The “barometer” does not forecast approaching weather at all; instead, the tail merely reacts to conditions that are already present. Wind makes it move, rain makes it wet, frost makes it stiff, and fog may obscure it from view.

The physical attachment of the textile tail transforms the postcard from a purely graphic joke into a simple interactive object. This tactile element was essential to the humour and also made the card visually memorable as a souvenir or novelty gift.

The postcard belongs to a broader family of twentieth-century comic weather indicators in which stones, ropes, strings, animal tails and other everyday objects were jokingly presented as substitutes for real meteorological instruments. Such objects illustrate how deeply the concept of the barometer had entered popular culture: the word itself had become shorthand for almost any device — serious or otherwise — that claimed to indicate the weather.

Within a collection of historical weather instruments and ephemera, this postcard provides a playful example of the popular reinterpretation of meteorology outside the scientific sphere.