As we are now into fall, many
conversations involve talk about what kind of winter we might have.
Everyone has a theory based on various things--satellite data to the Farmers' Almanac, caterpillars to pig spleens, and aching joints to
hair thickness.
The good old standby of the
Farmers' Almanac predicts a colder winter with more snowfall than
normal for North America this year. And how accurate is the Farmers
Almanac? Well it depends on who you talk to. The people who
sell the book, say their predictions have been 80% accurate.
Otherwise, you can take any year or place and make the predictions
work or not. Accuracy is in the eye of the beholder. I'd like to
believe that they are going to be wrong this winter.
How about some of the other indicators?
The woolly bear is another favored one. The woolly bear is a fuzzy
black and brown caterpillar of the Isabella tiger moth. They are seen
a lot during the fall as they move around looking for a protected
place to spend the winter. It seems like forever that I've heard people talk about
the woolly bear and its predictions about winter weather. I was never sure how that worked, but I assumed they
looked at their fuzzy coat and if it were heavier than normal, that
meant a harsher winter. Turns out, I was wrong.
Dr. D. H. Curran, curator of insects at
the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, actually
studied the woolly bear and its weather predicting abilities starting in 1946. For eight years he counted whether each of the 13 segments
of a woolly bear was black or brown. He averaged his counts and
then predicted the weather for the upcoming winter based on the black/brown ratios. His results were
80% accurate. However, he discounted his studies saying that he knew
his sample size was not very large. Other experiments have had
varying outcomes, so once again accuracy is in the eye of the
beholder.
But not to be deterred by previous
results, I set out to see what our local woolly bears were going to
tell me about the upcoming winter. However, I ran into a few
problems. The first one was even though these little worms are supposed
to be everywhere, I only found six of them over the course of several days. Of these, two were black and brown striped, and four of them
were entirely black. That was the next problem. What was I supposed
to do with the black ones? No one talked about those in the
studies I read. If I went strictly on the black/brown ratio, we are
in for a horrible winter. So, I decided to leave the black ones out
of the study and use only two data points. Those two had healthy
brown stripes, so I predict that we are going to have a mild
winter. Now how's that for making the numbers say just what you want?
So what kind of weather are we in for
this winter? I'm not sure. I think I may just have to stick my hand
out the window when the time comes to know for sure.
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How accurate is the Farmers' Almanac?
The Old Farmers' Almanac describing the woolly bear and how it predicts winter weather.
The Old Farmers' Almanac describing the woolly bear and how it predicts winter weather.
