A Snowball’s Chance In…

James Rada, Jr. Brace yourselves. It could be such a cold winter that one of the best-known prognosticators—the wooly bear caterpillar—is hiding out looking for a place to stay warm. “I haven’t seen one since August,” said Bill O’Toole, a prognosticator with the Hagers-Town Town and Country Almanac. Though he doesn’t recall how that shy caterpillar was colored, other people have said that the few wooly bears they’ve seen are all black, a sign of a cold winter approaching. Unscientific studies done in the 1940s found a correlation between how brown the middle of a wooly bear caterpillar was and how mild the winter was. The wider the brown band in the middle, the milder the winter; therefore, an all-black caterpillar is a warning to all who follow the predictions of the wooly bear. It’s going to be cold out there! O’Toole says that the Hershel Chart method of weather prediction that the almanac uses also shows that it will be cold this winter. Farmers developed the Hershel Chart centuries ago. “They tracked the weather and noticed trends based on moon phases and changes,” O’Toole said. It is not exact and things like active sunspots can play with the accuracy of the predictions. “Right now, it looks like it will be very similar to last year; colder than normal, snowier than normal,” stated O’Toole. He even explains that the conditions going into this winter are similar to those we had five years ago, during the winter of Snowmaggaden. “I’m not saying that that’s going to happen,” he quickly added. “Only that things are similar.” However, Christy Purdum noted on The Catoctin Banner’s Facebook page that the last time she saw an all-black wooly bear was the autumn before the region got hit with Snowmaggaden, and she had seen them again this fall. Some readers chimed in on the Facebook page with their thoughts about a snowy winter. “No thank you to a cold Winter! I want a mild Winter like we had a couple of years ago!” wrote Dawn Bonsby. “I believe it will be a bad winter and a lot of snow,” wrote Laura Hoyt. A few people are looking forward to northern Frederick County being a winter wonderland. “Let it snow, let it snow…I hope it is a really deep snow,” Chris Digilarmo wrote. So, now it’s just a waiting game. When will the first snow fall, and can I get to Arizona before it does?