Off Hours

Carolyn Egan photo by John Foraste http://www.foraste.com/

It was foggy on Sunday Jan. 5, the day the New England Patriots defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers at Foxboro Stadium.

But that weekend's unseasonable weather came as no surprise to Carolyn Egan, an administrative assistant for Computing and Information Services. She had predicted misty weather for the weekend weeks before.

Egan's no meteorologist in the same sense as Al Roker or John Ghiorse. But just at television weather forecasters surround themselves with charts and symbols to do their work, so does Egan, an astrologer who takes a particular interest in forecasting the weather based the sun signs and the positions of planets.

Astrology snagged Egan's interest in 1984, when she took her first class along with a friend. "I'm someone who needs the proof. Astrology was a way to plot performance. It answered questions for me about the human experience," she said.

What led to her astrological specialty? "I'm like most Rhode Islanders - I wonder when the next big hurricane will hit," Egan says. "We've got to have The Big One soon." She began by studying the charts of such storms as the great hurricane of 1938, then applied those lessons to current weather events.

Months before the start of each season, Egan does a weather chart for the area within a 50-mile radius of Providence. Compiling a report for the season entails an afternoon to produce the charts, and three to four hours a day for several days to analyze the charts and write about them. She publishes her report, "Weather Watching with the Stars," as a booklet and electronically through Zodiacal Zephyr. Her forecast for Dec. 24-March 21, which she published on Nov. 11, describes "extremely pregnant moisture" and above-normal temperatures. "Unusual and peculiar types of weather activity dot the landscape of the season. Thunderstorms occur as fronts collide. In the winter? Yes!"

Has she ever made an incorrect prediction? Sure, Egan acknowledges. But she learns from her mistakes by reexamining the charts for sun sign and planetary relationships she may have missed the first time around.

"Astrology is perfect; it's the astrologers who aren't perfect. We have our quacks as well as our experts. Astrology is still considered fringe. I'm out to change that," says Egan, who also teaches and does consultations for clients.

The afternoon I spoke with Egan, she had donned raincoat, scarf and umbrella to tromp through a downpour to meet me. She gave me a copy of her seasonal forecast. After she left, I looked up that week's prediction: "The moon is found on the ascendant of this chart. Moon = wet. Yes, more rain. ... The fourth house of this chart has the sign Taurus and always brings wet, wet, wet! Have your boots and umbrellas handy." Egan knew that, weeks before. - Tracie Sweeney