There’s an old West Point legend that says if it rains on graduation day, that class is going to war.
So I checked the data.
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I pulled together West Point graduation dates going back to 1802, compared them against historical precipitation records, and looked at whether each class graduated during—or just before—a major American conflict.
The result?
Rain on graduation day is basically a coin flip. And West Point graduates go to war often enough that rain doesn’t really have to predict anything.
In this video, I break down the legend, the data problems, what counts as “war,” and why this Army urban legend probably says more about American history than it does about the weather.
