First look at the upcoming winter....

Well, sort of!  We had a visitor in the studio this morning: a woolly bear caterpillar!  If you're familiar with the old weather folklore, the caterpillar can help you forecast just how harsh the upcoming winter will be just by looking at it's coloring.

Here's what the National Weather Service in La Crosse, WI had to say:

 

According to the old weather folklore, the amount of black on the woolly bear found in the fall varies proportionately with the severity of the upcoming winter.  The longer the woolly bear's black band: the colder, longer, snowier and more severe the upcoming winter will be.  Similarly, the wider the reddish-brown band means a more mild upcoming winter.  Also, the position of the longest dark bands indicates which part of winter will be the coldest.  If the head end of the caterpillar is dark, the beginning of winter will be severe.  If the tail end is dark, the end of winter will be cold.  Finally, the woolly bear caterpillar has 13 segments to its body, which traditionally forecasters say correspond to the 13 weeks of winter.

 

So, how did this even begin?  According to the Farmer's Almanac, back in the fall of 1948, Dr. C. H. Curran, curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, went on a 40 mile trip north of the city to Bear Mountain State Park to look at woolly bear caterpillars.  On his research adventure 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 third of the woolly bear's body.  As those relatively high numbers suggested, the corresponding winters were milder than average.  Unfortunately, the data samples were small and under no scientific illusion.  They were simply used as fun.

 

Even though this is a very common weather folklore and it's fun to go on 'woolly bear caterpillar' searches, the truth is the caterpillar really can't predict the upcoming winter.  Experts say the woolly bear caterpillar's coloring is based upon on how long the caterpillar has been feeding, its age and species.  Some even say it's more of an indicator of what the previous winter was like because if it's still around it means it was able to survive the previous winter months.  The coloring also is an indicator of the caterpillar's age.  Caterpillars shed their skin or molt six times before reaching adult size.  With each molt, their colors change, becoming less black and more reddish. 

 

So while the true science may not be with the folklore, it's still fun to search out the woolly bear caterpillar and see if maybe, just maybe, there's a little truth to what the upcoming winter will be like.