Keep Your Fishin' Gear Handy 'Cause It May Be a Mild Winter

I say that as a result of finding the woolly worm in the accompanying photo crawling across my driveway this morning.

These creatures, also known as woolly bear caterpillars (specifically, the larva of the Isabella tiger moth), have a reputation for being able to forecast the coming winter weather. If their rusty band is wide (as in the photo), then it will be a mild winter. The more black there is, the more severe the winter.

Granted, there's very little science involved here. However, I figure there's a better chance of this prediction coming true than one I heard just the other day on national television.

In that case, a bunch of "whack jobs," otherwise known as "conspiracy theorists," had gathered in Dallas, TX, awaiting JFK, Jr.'s return from the dead to run as Trump's VP in 2024. And no, I'm not BS'n anyone. Unfortunately, they all went away greatly disappointed...duh?

In any event, the woolly worm legend dates back to the fall of 1948, when Dr. C. H. Curran, curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, took his wife 40 miles north of the city to Bear Mountain State Park to look at woolly bear caterpillars. He collected as many caterpillars as he could in a day, determined the average number of reddish-brown segments it had, and forecast the coming winter weather through a reporter friend at The New York Herald Tribune.

Dr. Curran's experiment, which he continued over the next eight years, attempted to prove scientifically a weather rule of thumb that was as old as the hills around Bear Mountain. The resulting publicity made the woolly worm one of the most recognizable caterpillars in North America (alongside the monarch caterpillar and tomato hornworm).

Between 1948 and 1956, Dr. Curran's average brown-segment counts ranged from 5.3 to 5.6 out of the 13-segment total, meaning that the brown band took up more than a good third of the woolly bear's body. The corresponding winters were milder than average, and Dr. Curran concluded that the folklore has some merit and might be true.

But Curran was under no scientific illusion. He knew that his data samples were small. Although the experiments legitimized folklore to some, they were simply an excuse for having fun. Curran, his wife, and their group of friends escaped the city to see the foliage each fall, calling themselves The Original Society of the Friends of the Woolly Bear.

Thirty years after the last meeting of Curran's society, the woolly bear brown-segment counts and winter forecasts were resurrected by the nature museum at Bear Mountain State Park. The annual counts have continued, more or less tongue in cheek, since then.

For over 40 years, Banner Elk, NC, has held an annual Woolly Worm Festival in October, highlighted by a caterpillar race. Retired mayor Charles Von Canon inspects the champion woolly bear and announces his winter forecast. Similarly, there is a Woollybear Festival that takes place in Vermilion, OH, each October.

Most scientists discount the folklore of woolly bear predictions as just that: folklore. Mike Peters, an entomologist at the University of Massachusetts, doesn't disagree, but he says there could, in fact, be a link between winter severity and the brown band of a woolly bear caterpillar.

"There's evidence," he says, "that the number of brown hairs has to do with the age of the caterpillar--in other words, how late it got going in the spring. The band does say something about a heavy winter or an early spring. The only thing is...it's telling you about the previous year."

Weather is local, so you need to read your own woolly worms. Look for these fuzzy wuzzies in the fall. According to woolly worm watchers, there are two generations of worms each year. The first appear in June and July, and the second in September. The second generation worms are the "weather prophets."

To find a woolly bear, start looking under leaves and logs. Some are just crossing the road. Once you spot a woolly worm inching its way along the ground or road, you'll see them everywhere. The caterpillars are most active during the day (not at night). After filling up on food, including violets, lambs quarter, and clover, their goal is to find a place to hide for the winter. Interestingly, the woolly worm overwinters as larva. Their entire body will enter a "frozen" state until May, when it will emerge as the Isabella moth (see photo above).

Every year, the woolly worms do indeed look different...and it depends on their region. So if you come across a local woolly worm, observe the colors of the bands and what they foretell about your winter weather.