Folklore Sayings Foretell Winter Weather

Reading the signs is as old as Grandfather Mountain itself. “For centuries, people whose lives and livelihoods depended on the weather relied on lore to foretell tomorrow's weather,” said David Phillips, Senior Climatologist for Environment Canada. “They showed a keen sense of observation and quickly connected changes in nature with rhythms or patterns of weather.”

One weather saying we rely on in these hills is onion skins very thin, mild winter coming in; onion skins thick and tough, coming winter cold and rough. The onion skins in the fall of 2007 are about average.

It is said if wasps build their nests high, the winter will be long and harsh. This year the nests are not notably high above the ground, but there are certainly fewer bees nesting in the ground this season than did last summer. In 2006 you could hardly work in the yard for the likelihood of being stung by a ground-dwelling bee.

Squirrels gathering nuts in a flurry, will cause snow to gather in a hurry. The squirrels do not seem to be in much of a rush to collect their acorns, but the oak trees are certainly producing a bumper crop this season. It does not take a professional soothsayer to realize, however, that the abundance of acorns has more to do with trees putting their energy into producing seed during this stressful, dry summer than it does with nature’s ability to predict a snowy winter.

Another saying that speaks to the correlation between acorns and snow says, If Michaelmas (Sept. 29) brings many acorns, Christmas will cover the fields with snow. If that is the case, plan on a white Christmas at Grandfather.

In that vein, A green Christmas; a white Easter sure proved true last winter! The biggest snow we had all season was 9 inches in Easter weekend!

To summarize what the signs say about the winter of 2007-2008 as of the end of September: we should have close to average temperatures and snowfall with a white Christmas. But to get the definitive prediction, we must wait until the third weekend in October for the running of the woolly worms!

The Wooly Bear caterpillar has 13 brown and black segments, which supposedly correspond to the 13 weeks of winter. The lighter brown a segment is, the milder that week of winter will be. The darker black a segment is, the colder and snowier the corresponding week will be.

The question is, however, which woolly worm do you believe? That is why in Banner Elk we test our woolly worms with a day of races and let the strongest woolly worm predict the weather for the coming winter.

"Most of these natural forecasting methods are for the short range," said TV meteorologist Nick Walker. "Most long-range proverbs have no meteorological basis, including the legend of the ground hog."

Perhaps then the legend of the woolly worm has no basis in meteorology, but according to woollyworm.com, the winners of the past 29 Banner Elk Woolly Worm races were close or completely right 57 percent of the time, and more than half right 82.6 percent of the time. We wonder if Nick Walker can boast of that level of accuracy?

For more information on how to race your woolly worm at the 30th annual Woolly Worm Festival October 20-21, visit the Chamber of Commerce web site at www.balconyoftheblueridge.com.

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