Weather folklore: Is there any truth behind these old tales?

We've all heard them.  The old wives' tales and weather folklore that our grandparents and great-grandparents used to swear by.  And one folklore that is as old as can be, is the ability of the woolly bear caterpillar being able to predict the upcoming winter.  As the saying goes, you can gauge what the winter will be like just by looking at the width of the brownish/red band in the middle of the caterpillar.  The wider the band, the more mild the winter.  The more narrow the band, the more harsh the winter will be.

Well, Monday we had a visitor at the station.  Our very own woolly bear caterpillar!  And according to this guy, winter should be mild...right?!?

Let's take a look at how this old tale came to be.  According to the Farmer's Almanac, in the fall of 1948, Dr. C. H. Curran, curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, took his wife to Bear Mountain State Park to look at woolly bear caterpillars.  While there, he collected as many caterpillars as he could, determined the average number of brownish segments and tried to forecast the coming winter.  He continued this experiment for the following eight years.  During that time, Dr. Curran's average brown-segment counts ranged from 5.3 to 5.6 out of the 13 segments that a woolly bear caterpillar has.  As those numbers suggested, the corresponding winters were milder than average.  Now, most scientists discount the folklore as just that, folklore.  But there are some who say there may be some truth behind these little critters.  "The number of brown hairs on the caterpillar has to do with the age of the caterpillar and can say something about a heavy winter or spring, but it's telling you about the previous year", says Mike Peters, an entomologist at the University of Massachusetts.  Also, the coloring is based on how long the caterpillar has been feeding, it's age and species.  The better the growing season, the bigger is will grow.  This typically results in a more narrow brownish band in the middle.  It also indicates the age of the woolly bear caterpillar, according to the La Crosse, WI NWS.  The caterpillars tend to shed their skin and molt six times before reaching adult size.  With each molt, their colors change and become less black and more brownish/red.  So, this must mean our caterpillar is getting a little old.

Even though there might not be a whole lot of truth behind this legend, these caterpillars are still fun to find.  With this folklore in mind, I wanted to find some other weather folklore that may help us get an idea of what this winter might have in store.  Have you heard of any of these?  Are there any that your grandparents used to tell you?  Share them with us in the comments below!  One that stuck out was, 'If the first snowfall lands on unfrozen ground, the winter will be mild'.  Well, officially we had 0.1" of snow last week, and that fell on unfrozen ground.  How about the one with the squirrels?  I remember the squirrels were gathering nuts like crazy last year.  Have you seen many out this year?  I still believe there is some truth behind these.  After all, we had to use something before weather forecasting became as advanced as it did!