Indian Summer and Wooly Worms

After the Midwest endured the wettest October in history, the first days of November have brought us Indian Summer in full force!  The last couple of days have been dry, sunny, and with temperatures in the 70s.  In fact, all weekend I've been wearing shorts, t-shirts, and sandals!  Today I did my final lawn mowing of the season, and there was some brow wiping going on.

The gorgeous weather has enticed me to do some extra walking outdoors, drinking in the sorely-missed sunshine and letting wind blow through my hair.  It's been fabulous!  On my walks, I've noticed a ton of wooly worms!  It got me to thinking about the legend regarding the worms and their stripes predicting the coming winter weather.  The wooly worms I've been seeing these past few days are like the one in the picture -- the rust section about as wide as in the pic, although I've seen bushier coats.  According to the legend, the thinner the stripe, the harsher the winter.  So, according to the fat bands of rust I've beenseeing, the worms are indicating that we can expect a mild winter here. 

However, I found a local weather report from central Illinois -- "Judy's Wooly Worm Forecast" -- in which "Judy" says that the worms are 80% accurate (sorry -- don't believe that), and that the worms there are showing little stripage.  So, Judy is predicting a cold winter with plenty of snow for Christmas.

Interestingly, Judy points out that the worms have 13 segments -- for the 13 weeks of winter.  And, the dark ends mean that the winter will begin and end cold, but the big stripe in the middle means mild temperatures in the middle of winter.

Not scientific at all ... I'm a skeptic about such things like the Farmer's Almanac and wooly worms ... but, they're still fun.  The walks and wooly worms have helped me, too, with forgetting the world's troubles for a while.  Luckily, there's more good weather to come this week!