Las cabañuelas (also cavanuelas or cabanuelas) were a method of forecasting the weather practiced throughout the Hispanic diaspora.
Las cabañuelas is practiced throughout Mexico, South America, including the Caribbean, and even in parts of Africa that were previously territories of Spain.
In Spain, the so-called experts cabañuelistas are organized in the Asociación Cultural Española de cabañuelas y Astrometeorología (ACECA) and every year they report the weather for the coming twelve months.
The cabañuelistas in Spain claim that cabañuelas is "an empirical science" and that its origin is thousands of years old, when the "only reference of the time was the Moon", even the times that Egyptians used to measure the levels of the Nile waters, the Sirius star, and that the old base of cabanuelas was measured beginning August 1.
[1] In Northern New Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic and Venezuela, the cabañuelas were practiced as follows: When the expected weather for 2011 was reported in Spain, January and February were expected to be "very cold, ice, morning fogs with several days with snow precipitation".