How to Predict Winter By Watching Insects

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By alltrails
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Predict Winter By Watching Insects

How many times have we heard that the woolly-worm can predict a bad winter? Well, there’s something to this. Back in the old days, the farmers had to use something other than television weathermen to tell them what kind of weather was on the horizon.

Over hundreds of years they learned, and passed down to new generations, how to predict a bad winter by using animals, plants, insects and other natural things. This article will tell you how the farmers used insects to predict how bad the approaching winter would be.

Here are some signs:

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Step 1

Watch the butterflies and listen to the katydid:

Butterflies migrate early. If they do, winter will come in early.

When butterflies bunch up together in the sky, winter is coming soon.

Three months after the first katydid begins singing, the first killing frost will come.
Step 2

It will be a bad winter if….

There are crickets in your chimney.

The ants build their hills higher than normal.

Hornets and yellow jackets build their nests lower to the ground than normal.

Miller moths keep hitting the screen door to get in.

There are lots of spiders in the fall.

You see worms in your house or outbuildings in October.
Step 3

Keep an eye on the woolly-worm:

And now, the trusty woolly-worm (woolly-bear caterpillar), who is a great predictor of weather. Here’s how to watch the signs of the wooly-worm and what they mean….

If there are more than usual crawling around, and they have heavy coats, a bad winter is coming.

If the black band on his back in wide, the winter will be bad. The more black a worm is, the worse the bad winter will be.

If the worm if mostly brown with very little black, the winter will be gentle.

If his front has a lot of black, the bad weather is coming. If his rear end is black, the worst is over.

If he’s brown on both ends and orange in the middle, the winter will be gentle.

If you see a woolly-worm before the first frost, the winter will be bad.
Step 4

So, there you have it. Who needs the slick weathermen on the television when you have the woolly-worm, spider and Miller moth to tell you how bad the winter is going to be?