"no way...could possibly..." (emphasis added)

This is a good example of what I meant over in the evolutionary psychology thread; coming up with evolutionary psychology explanations is a good practice to avoiding succumbing to 'arguments from incredulity', as I like to call this sort of comment.

"Oh, I couldn't think of how astronomy could possibly be useful in weather or crop forecasting, so I'll just assume the stories about Thales are a lie."

I'll leave this here for you.

" Forecasting Andean rainfall and crop yield from the influence of El Niño on Pleiades visibility", Nature 403, 68-71 (6 January 2000):

"Farmers in drought-prone regions of Andean South America have historically made observations of changes in the apparent brightness of stars in the Pleiades around the time of the southern winter solstice in order to forecast interannual variations in summer rainfall and in autumn harvests. They moderate the effect of reduced rainfall by adjusting the planting dates of potatoes, their most important crop1. Here we use data on cloud cover and water vapour from satellite imagery, agronomic data from the Andean altiplano and an index of El Niño variability to analyse this forecasting method. We find that poor visibility of the Pleiades in June—caused by an increase in subvisual high cirrus clouds—is indicative of an El Niño year, which is usually linked to reduced rainfall during the growing season several months later. Our results suggest that this centuries-old method2 of seasonal rainfall forecasting may be based on a simple indicator of El Niño variability."