The frigid Arctic blast we endured the last few days caused by a polar vortex drew bone chilling cold from Canada and record low temps into our area. It makes us wonder what the coming winter will bring when it officially arrives on Dec. 21?
That thought had just entered my mind when I crossed paths with one of Mother Nature’s storied winter weather forecasters, a woolly bear worm inching its way across our driveway. Incidentally, the wooly bear worm isn’t really a worm; it’s a caterpillar that’s the larva of the Isabella tiger moth.
But according to folklore popularized by the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the more brown this fuzzy caterpillar’s coat displays, the milder the approaching winter will be; the more black there is, the harsher the winter weather we can expect. The woolly bear worm I encountered had almost equal sections of black and brown with a little more black than brown which appears to predict a moderate to harsh winter.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, on a Facebook post last week, noted that “8 out of 9 woolly bear caterpillars agree it will be a mild winter. Severe or mild, they’ll all be frozen solid under leaf litter anyway. In the spring, these caterpillars will thaw out, pupate within cocoons and emerge as adult Isabella tiger moths. While there’s no scientific backing to the idea that the banding color can predict winter weather, it’s still fun to watch for patterns. Even caterpillars from the same clutch of eggs can have a wide variation in color.”
Woolly bear warnings aside, the size of our fall mast crops like acorns, beech nuts, and walnuts are also considered a harbinger of the winter ahead. The larger the mast crop, the harsher the winter. While this is a forecast also tied to folklore, the mast that fell along our lengthy driveway, namely a record number of walnuts and hickory nuts (the most we’ve seen in some 25 years here) does not bode well for a mild winter. The theory is that such expansive mast crops are a means of the trees dropping seeds to preserve their species and also help the animals that feed upon them (like squirrels and deer) get through rough and snowy winters.
And speaking of squirrels (and more folklore courtesy of the Old Farmer’s Almanac) these treebound rodents have a few ways of forecasting winter weather themselves. One has to do with their tails. The bushier the tail, the harsher the winter weather ahead. Squirrel activity is also a predictor of the weather to come. The busier the squirrels are gathering and hiding fruit and nuts, the worse the winter will be. The height of the nests squirrels assemble is also supposedly an indicator of future weather. The higher the nest, the worse the weather; the lower the nest, the milder the weather.
Weather forecasting folklore also involves insects. Like those of squirrels, the higher the nests of wasps and hornets, the worse the winter weather. As for spiders, the larger their webs, the longer and colder the winter.
And of course, Mother Nature’s most highly regarded animal when it comes to forecasting the weather is the groundhog, and of course the most famous groundhog of them all is Punxsutawney Phil. If Phil sees his shadow on Feb. 2 (Ground Hog’s Day), it means there will be six more weeks of winter; if not, we can look forward to an early spring.
So, with brutal weather predicted for the week ahead, no matter what those wooly bears might say, here’s hoping our readership stays safe and warm throughout those winter months.
Tom Tatum is the outdoors columnist for MediaNews Group. You can reach him at tatumt2@yahoo.com.
