Login
Articles (Blog)
Look for Wooly Bears
Posted on October 19, 2023 8:00 AM by Gerry Trout
 
Here is another predictor of winter weather:  the wooly bear caterpillar.  
 
Looks like more brown than black to me.  The pointy end is the head.  It was crossing the road traveling north. 
 
Here’s what I found in Wikipedia:  
 
Folklore
 
Canadian and U.S. folklore holds that the relative amounts of brown and black hair on a larva indicate the severity of the coming winter. It is believed that if a Pyrrharctia isabella's brown band is wide, winter weather will be mild, and if the brown band is narrow, the winter will be severe. In a variation of this story, the color of stripes predicts the winter weather, with darker stripes indicating a harsher winter. In reality, hatchlings from the same clutch of eggs can display considerable variation in their color banding, and a larva's brown band tends to widen with age as it molts.
 
Another version of this belief is that the direction in which a Pyrrharctia isabella crawls indicates the winter weather, with the caterpillar crawling south to escape colder weather. There is no scientific evidence for winter weather prediction by Pyrrharctia isabella.
 
So if you like to predict the winter weather based on wooly bear caterpillars, looks like a mild winter here.
 
 
FINGERS CROSSED!!!
 
 
Comments
Add Comment
No Comments
Archives