Best Winter Weather Predictor

Last fall the Farmer's Almanac predicted a harsh winter for all of us in Northern Indiana this year.  Because of this, our local news channel recently named the winter of 2020 as #noshowwinter since in reality it was the second mildest winter on the record books.  Even the snowstorm this week didn't change the fact that this winter was a mild one compared to those of the past few years making both preseason predictions of the Farmer's Almanac and the meteorologists grossly incorrect.

As astonished as though were who followed the Farmer's Almanac and the weathermen last fall, I wasn't even remotely surprised with the mild winter.  I had never put much stock in meteorologists' predictions and hadn't picked up a Farmer's Almanac since high school.  Instead I had learned as a young child that the best predictor of winter weather in our area was the Woolly Bear Caterpillar.  Both of my Grandmothers had taught me well before I started elementary school that the rings on the Woolly Bear would show me exactly the type of winter that we would have and it has never let me down.  The caterpillar pictured below looked exactly like each one that I had seen on my daily walks last autumn.  Thus, I didn't need any more information from the experts after I spotted my first Woolly Bear this past October.  It had already predicted the winter weather for me.  The black section at the front covering the first quarter of the insect, the long section of brown in the middle and the small strip of black at the end told me everything that I would need to know.  Therefore, the harsh start to winter, extremely mild middle of winter, and the small surge at the end of the season didn't surprise me at all.