Rainfall over the tropics varies by about one per cent across the lunar month — a genuine, measured effect, and far too small for anyone to feel.

The Moon raises a tide in the atmosphere as well as the ocean. Where the air is bulged upward it is very slightly warmer, which lets it hold marginally more moisture, which very slightly suppresses rain. It took fifteen years of satellite data to see it at all, and it is worth knowing precisely because it is the opposite of the folklore: real, published, and about a hundredth the size people imagine.