While out for a walk in the neighborhood, a woolly bear caterpillar boldly crossed my path. I stopped to look at it. His body was black in a quarter of the head area. The other three quarters wore a thick brown coat. I remembered that there was something about a woolly bear’s fur that is supposed to give you a clue as to the severity of the winter weather ahead. But, it’s been too long since I heard the details.
So, I searched the web. I immediately found out that this caterpillar is supposed to have black on both ends. One wonders if what I saw was an imposter or a freak of nature. Maybe it would be faster in a race. Some cities still revere the predictive powers of this caterpillar, honoring the insect with an annual festival. But of course, a festival won’t hold the crowd’s interest for long unless there’s some action going on at it. Therefore, they organize caterpillar races and tell stories about the woolly bear, which is actually the larval stage of the Isabella Tiger Moth. Did you know that these caterpillars are found as far north as the Arctic, where they freeze over (go into a cryogenic state)? They thaw in the spring to eat and fatten up before turning into moths.
Now, I know you don’t want me to give up the winter weather predictive powers of “Punxsutawney Phil” the groundhog. You know how he works she. He leaves his lair, or is dragged out, on February 2 (Groundhog Day), where he will or will not see his own shadow. If it sees it, the groundhog returns to its den because it has forecast six more weeks of harsh winter weather. Of course, this is a trick. If the sun is out when they drag him, he Will see your shadow No one has said this, but if Phil casts his shadow on a woolly bear with a narrow brown stripe, we should all hide in his groundhog den because the “snowy apocalypse” or “snowy mageddon” is coming!
I’ve heard weather guys and gals talk on TV about dew point, an occluded front, and Tor Con, but when the weather gets serious, like a hurricane approaching the east coast of the US, they switch the conversation to the computer. -Generated models. Most of them bet on the American or European computer model. So are we to believe that computers are more accurately predicting our pending winter weather and our weather analysts are simply reading computer-generated data? What happened to the woolly bear? Have meteorologists lost confidence in their predictive power of winter severity? I do not think so. My theory is that each of those weather experts has one and consults with their woolly bear before telling us what the computer said!
