Woolly Bear Weather Prediction

Photo
A woolly bear.

Jeff Masters column on the Wunderground weather site offers this:
According to legend, the severity of the upcoming winter can be judged by examining the pattern of brown and black stripes on woolly bear caterpillars--the larvae of Isabella tiger moths. If the brown stripe between the two black stripes is thick, the winter will be a mild one. A narrow brown stripe portends a long, cold winter.

The Hagerstown, Maryland Town and Country Almanack has been publishing weather forecasts and weather lore for 209 years. The Almanack sponsors an annual woolly bear caterpillar event, where local school children in Hagerstown collect woolly bears. A panel of judges examines the collected specimens and issues a woolly bear forecast for the upcoming winter. Gerald W. Spessard, the Town and Country Almanack's business manager and one of this year's two judges, observed that the middle brown stripes on the 20 caterpillars collected this year were thicker than usual. "There's not a whole lot of black at either end, so we both agree this should be a fairly mild winter," Spessard said, according to an AP press release.

So it would seem that the weather at the Cape will not be severe (lots of brown in the middle) and here in CT it should be a somewhat mild winter (our woolly bears have less brown in the middle than the Cape Cod woolly bears). Come spring, we will have to remember to revisit the woolly bear prediction and see how well they did. The woolly bears do not agree with my predictions nor do they agree with The Old Farmers' Almanac. They do agree, however with the Maryland woolly bears. Have you had enough, already?