Old Scratch and Weather Patterns

A thin edge of storm hung over our house— leaving the western edge in full sun, the eastern half, the backyard, in clouds to the horizon. Facing the full sun a fine dense rain lowered over the neighborhood— everything slick with water.
Where did the logic of the old folktale develop, the one explaining rain on sunny days as the Devil beating his wife? There seems no apparent connection between a figure of Old Scratch and weather patterns.
Earlier today, after grading research papers, I stumbled across a web site detailing a crime scene during World War II in England. The place names and elemental images carry oddities, shadows of further folklore:
                    Witch hazel tree
                    wych elm
                    Hagley Wood
                    Wych Bury (Burning?) Hill
133/ At night he sweeps his guilt under the bed, among loose hairs, filaments of the real, a broken wing of a blue Sunday moth, a stray patch of paper from a magazine, a plastic ring from a bottle of milk, a piece of gravel, a cooper penny, the lost button from his workshirt, the hesitancy between the telephone’s rings—

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