A Woolly Worm Winter

While visiting Blackberry Mountain during the Fall season, you may have stumbled across a small, brown-ish fuzzy caterpillar inching slowly along on your path. That’s a woolly worm, also known as the woolly bear caterpillar. Perhaps you even stayed in our Woolly Bear accommodation – our Treehouses are all named after butterflies and moths. But did you know that legend says the woolly worm can predict the weather for the upcoming Winter season?

As Fall arrives and other animals begin their migration route to escape the colder weather to come, the woolly worm begins its travel to find the perfect spot for its own hibernation, and once hibernation is complete, its transformation into an Isabella Tiger Moth. The woolly worm is local to most southern regions in the United States and is known for its fuzzy appearance and coloring. Lore states that the coloring of its body and the amount of fuzz that encompasses its body, can predict the Winter season to come.

If you happen to see one out and about during its travel, try and safely observe its coloring, pattern and how fuzzy it seems to be. What do you see?

The color represents the type of Winter that may be expected. Black represents severe and harsh Winter conditions, reddish-brown means more mild Winter conditions may be expected, and rust-colored fuzz predicts a light to mild Winter.

The color pattern represents the time span of that particular Winter condition. The woolly worm has 13 segments to its body which are said to correspond with the 13 weeks of Winter. So, if you notice a woolly worm that has a black head and reddish-brown body, it indicates that the start of your Winter season will be severe, but that it’ll level out to more mild conditions in the later weeks of the season.

The amount of fuzziness indicates the overall temperature for the Winter season as a whole. If your Woolly Worm is extremely fuzzy, you can expect a colder Winter, but if it’s less fuzzy, it could mean your Winter temperatures won’t drop quite so low.

We love local legend and checking in on nature’s meteorologists to see what they predict. If woolly bear caterpillars live in your area, see if you can spot one and see what its coloring reveals.

At Blackberry Mountain, we’re seeing woolly worms with black heads and brown bodies. So, according to the lore, we can expect a strong and severe kick off to the Winter that will taper off to more mild conditions as the season continues. We’ll see if they’re right!

See how our Blackberry Mountain woolly worm Winter prediction compares to our Blackberry Farm persimmon seed prediction here!