Wooly Bear Caterpillar Calls for Mild Winter

With wintertime just around the corner, predictions are boundless as to what mother nature will send our way in the meteorologist's nightmare that is Schoharie County (with our deep valleys and cutting hillside, weather can change from one extreme to another here), but if the wooly bear caterpillar's amazing powers of prediction are to be relied upon, we might be in for a milder season than expected.

According to Dr. C.H. Curran's 1950's experimentation with the wooly bear population of Bear Mountain State Park, there is a correlation between the percentage of reddish-brown segments on the caterpillar to the severity of the upcoming winter. Although doubted by scientists, Dr. Curran's findings were essentially that the browner the wooly is; the milder the winter will be.

And if the caterpillar I discovered over the weekend is any indication, perhaps the forecasts are inaccurate concerning the upcoming winter: with over a whole third of the coloring a reddish-brown, with Curran's standard being roughly 40%, nature's smallest weathermen are definitely going against the conventional wisdom in calling for a nicer than usual winter - and don't I ever hope they are right.