El Niño Winter Is Coming, But What Do Persimmons And Woolly Worms Say?

ACROSS AMERICA — What kind of punch will the upcoming El Niño winter pack? Forget the meteorologists and other weather scientists with PhD behind their names. Slice open a persimmon and look for knives, spoons and forks. Or give an eye-level look to woolly caterpillar and see what its fuzzy coat says.

Such folklore may make sense only in certain places. And even in places where people are splitting persimmon seeds over the type of winter we’ll have, it may not make sense to anyone under 40 or so. Or 60. The understanding of these traditions is kind of random.

Persimmons are having an “it” moment. They’re rich in vitamins A and C, as well as manganese, which helps blood clot, and other antioxidants that reduce the risk of serious problems like cancer and strike. The taste is bitter and astringent until they fully ripen, at which point they are soft and sweet.

But don’t think any persimmon plucked from the produce bin will do when it comes to weather predictions. It’s crucial to get a persimmon from a local tree or farmers market. (American persimmon trees can grow virtually anywhere that winter temperatures don’t dip below 25 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, so they’re not that hard to find.)

And the forecast will be unreliable, if it indeed is accurate to begin with, with a persimmon shipped in from who knows where, and you may see forks when you split open the fruit and actually get knives.

You ask: What does that even mean?

Slice the fruit in half to reveal 10 seeds, then slice the persimmon seeds, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac. The first one cut open represents the first week of winter, and so on, until you’re through the 10 weeks of winter.

If the seed looks like a fork, it’s going to be a mild winter. A spoon shape means plenty of snow to be shoveled, and a knife is fairly self-explanatory — icy cold that will cut clean to the bone.

This bit of folklore seems to be rooted in the Ozark Mountains, which are located primarily in Missouri and Arkansas.

There’s no consensus on the accuracy of the persimmon forecasts, according to the University of Vermont’s Center for Teaching and Learning. The people sharing pictures of the seeds on social media don’t exactly swear by the results, but it’s a fun way for family and friends to grumble about the coming winter.

What Does The Woolly Worm Say?

Another way to predict winter is to look at the “woolly worms” — though this is even less scientific than reading persimmons because these fat, furry creatures can’t be picked up at a farmers market. Prognosticators must depend on chance encounters or go out looking for them.

And they’re not worms at all. They’re caterpillars, the larva of the Isabella tiger moth. In parts of New England and the Midwest, they’re known as “woolly bears.” And other places, they’re known as the “fuzzy bear caterpillar” or the “hedgehog caterpillar” because the creature curls into a ball and plays dead when it’s picked up or disturbed.

Whatever they’re called, they have 13-segment bodies, said to represent the approximate number of weeks in winter, according to the National Weather Service.

According to folklore, if the rust-colored band is wide, it’s going to be a mild winter. The more black there is, the more severe the season ahead.

Also, the position of the longest dark bands supposedly indicates which part of winter will be most severe. If the head end of the caterpillar is black, winter will get off to a nasty start. If the tail end is dark, the end of winter will be cold.

There are a couple more versions of the story. In some places, it’s believed that if the woolly caterpillar seems to have a lot of hair, it’s going to be a cold winter. The coat, though, is just nature’s way of protecting the insect against the harsh elements of winter.

Another version holds that if the woolly worm is crawling in a southerly direction, it is trying to escape the brutal winter ahead. If the caterpillar seems to be crawling on a northward path, winter will be warm and mild.

Actually, the woolly bear’s color has more to do with its age, its species and whether it had enough to eat over the growing season. If it’s big with only a bit of orange and brown coloring, the worm has had plenty to eat.

The National Weather Service says the woolly bear myth dates to colonial times, but grew in popularity with a small study in 1948 by Dr. Howard Curran, the curator of entomology from the American Museum of Natural History. With a reporter, his colleagues and their wives, Curran went to Bear Mountain, New York, and counted the brown bands on 15 species of woolly caterpillar, and then made a prediction of winter that was published locally and then picked up by the national press.

What Do Weather Scientists Say?

Neither of these forecasting methods from folklore is scientifically reliable. But neither is the annual forecast from Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog that pokes its head out in the wilds of Pennsylvania every Feb. 2 to predict how long winter will last.

The National Weather Service said in its U.S. Winter Outlook last week the strong El Niño climate pattern will mean a snowy winter in many parts of the country and rainy weather in others, which could lessen severe drought conditions in much of the country

The United States hasn’t had an El Niño winter in four years.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists expect wetter-than-average conditions to prevail in Alaska, and portions of the West, Southern Plains, Southeast, Gulf Coast and lower mid-Atlantic from December through February.

At the same time, it’ll be drier than average across the country’s northern tier, especially in the northern Rockies and High Plains and near the Great Lakes, forecasters said.