The Old Farmer’s Almanac says: “If you find an all-black woolly caterpillar, don’t worry-this doesn’t mean that we’re in for a severe, endless winter! It’s just a caterpillar of a different species, and is not used for forecasting. If there is NO black band – does that mean this will be an unbelievably cold an snowy winter? Well, no. There is a correlation, but drinking milk has nothing to do with becoming a billionaire.Īnyhow, the legend took off…there are woolly bear festivals and occasional news stories about the critters.

My first thought was “correlation without causation” – like “98% of all billionaires drank milk as a kid, therefore to be a billionaire, drink milk”. The bigger the brown width, the milder was the winter. Curran continued to look at the woolly bears and noted a faint correlation between the thickness of the brown segments and the severity of the winter than followed. Curran’s experiment, which he continued over the next eight years, attempted to prove scientifically a weather rule of thumb that was as old as the hills around Bear Mountain. Curran collected as many caterpillars as he could in a day, determined the number and size reddish-brown segments, and forecast the coming winter weather through a reporter friend at The New York Herald Tribune.Dr. Curran, curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, took a trip to Bear Mountain State Park to look at the woolly bear caterpillars.ĭr.

For decades the woolly worm has been given the legend of being able to forecast the severity of the coming winter. Well look at this! While on a walk through the woods at Yankee Springs yesterday (Wed.), I came across this caterpillar.

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