Does Rain at West Point Predict America’s Next War?

Added: 2026-05-29

[00:00:00]Is the United States going to war this year? Well, according to an urban legend about the United States Military Academy at West Point?

[00:00:08]>> Yes. Yes, we are.

[00:00:09]>> And the reason is that it rained during graduation at West Point on May 23rd, 2026. I'm not kidding. Bear with me on this. It's going to get really, really interesting. The US Military Academy, known as West Point, is basically a full-time college for officers. About 20% of the US officer core tends at school. There is this legend among West Point officers that's really no different than like the Jersey Devil or the Moth Man or even Large Marge.

[00:00:36]>> Be sure and tell them Large Marge sent you.

[00:00:42]>> The legend states that rain on graduation day means the graduating class will go to war. So, how true is that? Well, in my other life as a contractor, I find bad guys so that well, needless to say, I'm pretty good at sifting through large amounts of data to look for the truth. Or I'm a psychopath. I don't know. I'm on the fence.

[00:01:03]>> Do you want me to be honest or nice?

[00:01:05]>> Anyway, I I thought about the problem.

[00:01:06]What I needed to get was every single graduation date from West Point going back to the year 1802, then see if I could figure out the weather on graduation day. uh if there was a war that year or soon afterwards, then we can develop a model of the likelihood that rain equates to war for the graduating class of West Point. Before I get started, you know, only 5% of you are subscribed with notifications turned on. So, make sure you're subscribed and hit the bell. And uh all of this data, the spreadsheet, uh the histogram, it's all at ryanbth.substack.com if you want to download it and check my work. Now, the United States Military Academy was officially founded by President Thomas Jefferson upon signing the Military Peace Establishment Act of 1802. College was really founded as an engineering school designed to train young men in surveying and construction for this nation's early bridges, roadways, harbors. First graduate was in October of that year, a man named Joseph Gardner Swift, who eventually became chief of engineers in the US Army from 1812 to 1818. Now there were four challenges in generating this spreadsheet. The first is that the date of graduation can be kind of murky from 1802 until 1816 and uh that's because a lot a lot of the early days graduations were tied to the individual candidate not classes but we don't really have weather data for that time period anyway. So doesn't really matter. And uh in some cases there are also multiple graduation dates like during the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam where we're just pumping out classes as fast as we can. Second challenge is that we have to define what is a war. I think we can all agree that like World War I, World War II, those are wars. But were the Indian Wars in the West a war? What about the banana wars in Central America? Do they count? What about the Cold War? So, I'm just going to go with major conflicts.

[00:02:57]Major conflicts count. And uh speaking of major conflicts, we have to talk about the global war on terror. When did the global war on terror actually end?

[00:03:05]So you could say it ended on December 31st, 2022, which was the date that the global war on terrorism service medal stopped being awarded. But I would actually say the global war on terror ended on August 30th, 2021, which was the date the US finally left Afghanistan.

[00:03:21]Third challenge is getting weather data.

[00:03:24]You know, for a great amount of time, there's just no weather data available.

[00:03:28]just wasn't recorded. And in fact, the first date we have for precipitation data at West Point was in 1837 where it rained 1.25 in. Now, weather data for precipitation became a little more solid in uh 1924.

[00:03:41]And then the fourth issue is what is rain on graduation day? I mean, I it if it rained in the morning on graduation day, but the skies are clear on graduation, does it count? What if it rains after graduation? I'm getting into Gremlin's level of don't feed him after midnight here, but you would think that the legend is if it rains during the graduation ceremony, then the class goes to war. But the legend isn't really specific about that. Now, that being said, figuring out hourby- hour weather and comparing that to a list of graduation programs with times and dates for when commencement begins would be incredibly difficult. So, here are the ground rules for a day to count as rain on graduation. Number one, you have to have an accurate graduation date. Number two, there has to be a major conflict that year or the year before graduation.

[00:04:29]Indian wars, banana wars, Cold War doesn't count. And I'm also going to say that the years 2022 to 2026 don't count either because I guess we're technically at peace right now, maybe. Number three, we need to have weather data for that day. And number four, we have to have some amount of precipitation. So how do we visualize this? There we go. Told you I was a psychopath. So uh the only date where we have rain and weather data available in the early years was 1837 during the seminal wars. And then there were two graduation dates with rain during the second Mexican war in 1846 and 1848. Civil war there's no data available. The graduating class of 1897 had reign uh and then the next year you had the uh start of the SpanishAmerican War. During World War I, there were four graduation dates between 1917 1918 with a total precipitation of 002 and 003 in for the first day of graduation. And on the eve of World War II, the graduation class of 1940 had rain. So we're going to count that. Then during World War II, we had a dual graduation class in 1943 of which there was rain in the first class during graduation. There was also rain in 1944 and 1945. Korean War class of 1951 had uh 01 in of rain. And now we get to Vietnam. So when did Vietnam actually start? Well, the first advisers got to Vietnam in 1955. Now from the period of 1955 till 1975 during Vietnam it rained on graduation day 10 times.

[00:06:07]Now we get to the class of 1989 where I believe this legend actually originates. It rained 1.62 in in 1989 and the next year we have the first Gulf War. This brings us to present dayish and the global war on terror from 2001 until 2021 where it rained nine times.

[00:06:31]>> Nine times.

[00:06:33]>> So doing the math here, there have been 81 years with graduations from West Point during time of war or a year before the war. There have been 144 graduations during time of peace or at least where there have been no significant conflict. So just in general, if you go to West Point, you have a 36% chance of going to West Point during a time of major conflict or right before a major conflict. Now, from the data we have, it rained 67 times on graduation day and didn't rain 68 times.

[00:07:02]So it's basically a coin flip as to whether it's going to rain at graduation or not. And during wartime or before major conflict, it rained 28 times and didn't rain 29 times. So again, there's a coin flip there. So what can we take away from this data? Well, the the data is incomplete. We don't have very much precipitation data from West Point's early history. War is hard to define. If if you look at the data, it's interesting and kind of shocked me. The United States has really only been at peace for 31 years of our 250 year history. And I'm sure there's some Army Rangers who had issues with me saying that we were at peace in 1993.

[00:07:42]But that was actually the most eyeopening thing for me that in 250 years we've been at peace uh 12.4% of our history.

[00:07:53]Rain on graduation day is also kind of hard to define. Did it rain during the ceremony, before it, after it? I'm really just using uh daily precipitation as a proxy here. And finally, the numbers just don't show much signal. The most powerful number is that from the available data, you have a coin flips chance of it raining on graduation day.

[00:08:10]So, I would say that the legend that a West Point graduation class will go to war if it rains on graduation day is wrong because West Point classes go to war so often that rain doesn't have do any predictive work here. Check out my work at ryb.substack.com.

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[00:08:33]Thank you so much for watching.

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