Last week I mentioned the 20 Signs of a hard winter. Here are some initial reports:

In
Douglasville, Ga. I have noticed green acorns on the ground, green pecans on the ground, more spiders in the house, a squirrel burying nuts. I figured it was due to the drought. Maybe we will have a cold winter. My children have only seen a good heavy snow 1 time in their lives. That was in
Oak Grove Ky. snow, ice, and 15 below zero, but they were all babies then. Danny

Response: Danny - sounds like you have it all. Acorns, spiders, pecans and squirrels. Got out the shovel and any tool to stay warm this winter!

I live in central New Hampshire on Lake Winnipesauke– we have an abnormally high amount of Daddy Long Leg spiders in the area, I mean they are everywhere and on everything. Does this have any significance on a hard winter?

Please let me know what you think. Vicky

Response: I am not sure that the number of Daddy Long Legs is as significant as whether they are beating down the doors to get in. This is one to watch.

Here is an observation about caterpillar tents:

I just read your article about the woolybear caterpillar. “The wollybear caterpillar - A narrow orange band in the middle of the caterpillar warns of heavy snow; fat and fuzzy caterpillars warns of bitter cold. Also… a rough winter if you see lots of them crawling around, their movement is slow (thought they were always slow?), you saw them crawling before the first frost.”

I lived in Asheville NC and now in
Greenville, SC. I remember the winter of 1977 when
Beaver
Lake froze over and people were actually driving their cars across the lake in
Asheville. I just went to the Farmers Almanac and looked at the highs and lows for that month….what a month. I remember we had only two days of school all of January because of the cold. I visited
Hendersonville this past weekend and I noticed something that I have not seen in many years. There was an unusual amount of worms building nests in most of the trees throughout the area. They didn’t seem to spoil the Apple Festival or Apple Parade this weekend. Ken

Response: Ken is observing an annual occurrence,. It is called the Eastern Tent Caterpillar. The caterpillars lay eggs and each spring they hatch and start devouring leaves of trees and shrubs. When the caterpillar reach maturity after 6 weeks, they develop a silken cocoon that becomes visible on trees. It is not a sign of a hard winter but is the way this species survives year after year after year.

It may be a bit early for winter signs or is it?? Let me know what you are seeing.

We called for a possible hurricane to hit the East Coast this week. It was relatively quiet until the tropical storm turned up. Not a hurricane but winds and rain nonetheless. .

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