While walking Mika, our dog, along the parkway at Lake Ontario, I spotted my first Woolly Bear Caterpillar of the fall season. So, if you ever see one up close and observe the colors of its bands, do you believe in the myth?
You know the one that predicts the severity of the winter weather. Apparently, if the "rusty" band is wide the winter should be a mild one. Yet, if the "black" bands are greater, the winter will be more severe.
Also, if the black stripe by the head is longer, the first half of winter is supposed to be much colder. If the black is longer on the lower half of the caterpillar, the second half of winter will be the coldest. What do you think?
Image Source: Bing / farmanddairy.com
How it all started. In 1948, Dr. C. H. Curran from the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, drove to Bear Mountain State Park to find the woolly bear caterpillars with his wife. They collected as many as they could find that day.
After observing them all, they all had a similar number of reddish-brown segments to them. He continued this experiment for another 8 years attempting to determine if predicting the weather was accurate.
Source
Image Source: Bing / A-Z-Animals.com
This image is similar to the one that I took at the park. The rusty band covers over a third of the caterpillar's body. If the myth has any merit, the "rusty" band predicts a mild winter.
According to some of the research I did, Mike Peters who taught entomology at the University of Massachusetts believed the rusty hairs could coincide with an early spring or a heavy winter. But he suggested that it would have been the prediction from the previous year, not the one we are entering.
Let's take another look at my woolly bear photo. The head has a larger black area than the rear, suggesting colder first half of winter. The rusty middle takes up about half of the body, I think it suggests winter may be both colder and long with a much colder spring. but only if you believe in the caterpillar predicting this year's forecast.
If this caterpillar is predicting this year's weather, I'd have to say it lines up with what the weather stations are predicting. Let me know what you think of the age-old #folklore. It is fun to ponder and reflect back upon, don't you think?
