Woolly worm show must go on: Winter forecast released

Remnants of Hurricane Helene that dumped tons of rain on the western North Carolina mountain counties beginning on Sept. 27, forced the cancellation of the 2024 Woolly Worm Festival in Banner Elk (scheduled during the weekend of Oct.19-20).

The highlight of the big event is always the finals of woolly worm races. The woolly worm that is the fastest to shinny up a 36-inch string typically becomes the official prognosticator of winter weather for North Carolina’s High Country region.

 

The forecast is based on the color of the woolly worm’s 13 bands or body segments, which correspond to each week of winter.

While woolly worms are mostly black and a rust-colored brown, it takes an expert to “read the worm and interpret the results.” For many years, this task has been performed by local Avery County celebrity Tommy Burleson of Newland.

At 7-foot-2, he stands out in a crowd. Burleson played professional basketball for a time after winning an NCAA championship with the North Carolina State University Wolfpack in 1974 (50 years ago).

While leaders of the sponsoring organizations – the Avery County Chamber of Commerce and the Kiwanis Club of Baner Elk – said they hated to call off the festival this year, it was the right thing to do, since much of Avery County – including Banner Elk – is still in flood recovery mode. (Avery County Schools are hopeful to reopen for students on Nov. 6.)

 

Yet, a modified 2024 woolly worm race was held on Oct. 20, with a limited field of seven contestants. Each represented a flood disaster first responder unit in the county. The champion woolly worm belonged to the Newland Volunteer Fire Department.

 

Here is Burleson’s assessment of the winter forecast:

Week 1: Snow and below average temperatures.

Weeks 2-4: Light snow or frost and below average temperatures.

Weeks 5-6: Average temperatures.

Weeks 7-8: Light snow or frost and below average temperatures.

Weeks 9-10: Average temperatures.

Weeks 11-13: Snow and below average temperatures.

Festival organizers say they have been keeping score since 1978, and the woolly worm forecasts are 87.6% accurate.

If the winter 2024-25 forecast holds true with no periods of balmy weather, there is high anticipation for an excellent season for skiing and other winter sports in the months ahead.

Certainly, no one blames the prior year’s winning woolly worm, named “Jeffery,” for the devastation caused during the hurricane season flooding.

Jeffery’s sole job was to predict the weather for the 13 weeks of winter in 2023-24.

By the time Helene rolled through, Jeffery had been transformed from a fuzzy-wuzzy, 1½-inch caterpillar into an Isabella tiger moth and was long gone.

 

The first serious scientist to study woolly worms in 1948 was Dr. Charles Howard Curran, a Canadian entomologist and curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He would routinely drive about 50 miles north to visit Bear Mountain State Park on the Hudson River and examine “woolly bear caterpillars.”

Catherine Boeckmann of the Old Farmer’s Almanac said that Dr. Curran (shown below) spent eight years collecting the caterpillars in an attempt to prove scientifically “a weather rule of thumb that was as old as the hills around Bear Mountain.”

 

“Although the experiments legitimized folklore to some, they were simply an excuse for having fun. Curran, his wife, and their group of friends escaped the city to see the foliage each fall, calling themselves ‘The Original Society of the Friends of the Woolly Bear.’”

The torch has since passed to the folks at Woolly Worm Festival in Banner Elk.