http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/science/woolly-worm-festival-caterpillars-weather.html 2016-10-14 20:38:31 Can This Caterpillar Predict Winter Weather? Probably Not Very Well Scientists doubt these woolly worms can forecast the future, but that won’t stop people from racing them in North Carolina this weekend. === This weekend, 25 vertical racing lanes will hang along a sun-drenched stage in Banner Elk, N.C., awaiting their athletes — thousands of fuzzy, brown and black banded caterpillars. Throughout the day, people will sign up their worms for the big race. An M.C. known as “Last year Just as many Americans wait to see whether Thousands of proverbs exist that suggest animals can predict weather. “Whether it’s the woolly bear caterpillar, the skin on the belly of a catfish, or a mole in the depths of its hole, all of these are observations made decades ago when the only thing people could assess the weather on was the environment around them,” said Janice Stillman, an editor at The founder of the festival, Jim Morton, heard about the woolly worm and thought, why not give it a shot? But there isn’t much science backing up the use of the woolly worms as creepy crawly weather vanes. There are two kinds of forecasting when it comes to weather — short-term weather prediction, like how much it will rain over Banner Elk on Tuesday, and long-term climatology, like what each week will look like over winter in The High Country, said Dr. Lackmann doesn’t deny animals can probably sense oncoming extreme weather, but can a woolly worm forecast far into the future? “I would wager that if you kept score,” he said, “and compared that to what actually happened, I’d imagine there’d be nothing there.” Starting in 1948, C. H. Curran, an insect curator at the American Museum of Natural History, spent eight years There’s also no particular reason the fastest woolly worm is best at predicting the weather. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Maybe you just want to win a race. I asked these scientists what makes a fast woolly worm. If you see one hanging out in the sun or eating poison hemlock or If you can’t make it to North Carolina’s High Country, there are other woolly worm festivals around the country. One in