Friday, November 9, 2007

Will the winter be wooly?

When I was a little girl, I often heard my grandparents talk about the wooly caterpillar and the prediction of winter. This fall, I've seen several in my flower bed and they were all marked this same way:

" Some people believe that the coat of a wooly bear caterpillar can be used to predict how bad the coming winter will be.

There are many wooly bear caterpillars in the United States and Canada. They can be seen anytime from May to October.
They believe that if a wooly bear caterpillar's brown stripe is thick, the winter weather will be mild and if the brown stripes are narrow, the winter will be severe.

In the late 1600s, farmers relied on weather history to predict weather. For that reason, they looked for something in nature to help them. They found the wooly bear caterpillar. Reports about the weather, along with a comparison of wooly bear stripes, made people think that the wooly bear's coat was a good signal about weather. Some people still believe the wooly bear caterpillar can be used to predict weather."

Author Unknown

Hope your wooly caterpillars all have a WIDE brown stripe!!!!

3 comments:

Janice said...

Hi Suzy,
I found this so interesting! I saw one of these wooly guys a couple of weeks ago. I don't remember if the brown stripe was wide or narrow. Hopefully I can see one again soon and pay more attention! :o)
Janice

Susie said...

I'd never heard this before. It's really been a long time since I've seen the caterpillars that I remember from my childhood.

Theresa said...

I only heard of the groundhog telling us what was in store for Feb and March. I'll have to see if any wooly caterpillars are around so I can test the theory.