The Woolly Bear, also known as the Woolly Worm, has a history and reputation for being a fuzzy forecaster and for predicting the upcoming winter weather.
If you have lived in Cleveland or Northeast Ohio for many years, you are probably aware of this and likely know about the upcoming Woolly Bear Festival in Vermilion this weekend.
Of course, the festival first started in the 1970s by Cleveland's most famous meteorologist, Dick Goddard, to celebrate this forecasting caterpillar! (Yes, I know he worked at a different TV station, but I must give credit where credit is due!)
So what do the colors mean for our upcoming winter?
According to folklore, the wider the brown portions of the woolly bear are, the milder the winter will be, and if it is more black, the harsher the winter will be. But sometimes a Woolly bear has a range of colors!
- Wider Brown Bands and Smaller Black Bands = Mild Winter.
- Even Bands of Black tip and Brown Middle = Average Winter.
- Thin brown band = Harsh Winter.
- All Black = Severe Winter.
- Light brown or white = Snowy Winter (sometimes, more likely due to various species).
But is there any truth to this, or is it just a fun piece of weather folklore?
Back in the 1950s, Dr. C.H. Curran worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. At the time, Curran found that generally the wider the brown segments on the woolly worm, the milder the winter would be. This is where the folklore was born!
However, his research was not overly rigorous and quite limited.
Most scientists and entomologists now agree that the woolly bear's color reflects its developmental stage, age, species, and even past weather conditions, rather than the severity of the upcoming winter.
To understand this, let's look a little more into how woolly bears grow.
As the woolly bear grows, it molts, which means it sheds its outer layer of skin.
Every time they shed their skin, more brown bands can occur.
A wider brown band often indicates that it is an older caterpillar, as it has undergone more molts. It may have also experienced milder conditions earlier in its life.
So while they are legendary, the woolly bear's colors cannot accurately predict the winter ahead.
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