Scoping Out the Competition

One of the best ways to stay on top of your game is to occasionally look back and see what your competition is doing. You don't want to be too fixated on them and lose focus of what you are doing, but you still want to check them out once in a while to see what they are doing that is new. October is a very important month for my competition, and if I am not careful, I am often overlooked. Sometimes people ask me about my competition's forecast, without even asking what I think! So tonight I am out to finally de-bunk my biggest competition in the weather forecasting business before he can get started.

I am talking about the Woolly Worm, of course.

The 30th Annual Woolly Worm Festival is coming up in a few weeks. Held over the weekend of October 20-21 in Banner Elk, NC, this festival holds a Woolly Worm race that will determine who is the official forecaster for the year. Last year over 12,000 people watched a worm named Jerry Garcia take the race for the title of lead forecaster. Here is Jerry's forecast for last winter:

Week 1 - Cold & Snowy
Week 2 - Cold & light snow
Week 3 - Cold & Snowy
Week 4 - Cold & Snowy
Weeks 5-11 - Seasonably cool but no snow
Weeks 12-13 - Cold & light snow

How did Jerry do? In Asheville, the first two weeks of winter were unusually warm with no snow. Week 3 saw the first cool spell with an inch of snow, but I would not call it cold, temperatures were about average. Week 4 was much the same, normal temperatures and a dusting of snow. Week 5 was seasonable, but it finally got cold week 6. Weeks 7 & 8 were very cold with a little snow. Weeks 9 & 10 were seasonably cool with no snow. Winter ended with weeks 11-13 milder than normal with no snow. By my count, Jerry got 3 out of 13 weeks of winter right, and some of those weeks were downright wrong. The worm doesn't know what he is talking about! I will give him one compliment.... at least he has the guts to forecast an entire season in October. The groundhog, Punxatawney Phil
waits until winter is almost over before making his forecast.

While checking out my competition, I found out how the worm makes his forecast.... it is all in the stripes! To make the forecast, you take the worm, and divide it into 13 segments, representing the 13 weeks of winter. Now, you don't actually chop the worm to bits, that would make a mess, and PETA would probably boycott the Woolly Worm Festival, but you imagine 13 segments of the worm. Starting at the worm's head, each of the 13 weeks of winter will have parts or all of the brown and black stripes. If a segment is more black, it will be a harsher winter week, if a segment has more brown, it will be a milder week. Folklore also says that the bigger the black stripes, the harsher the winter.

The problem in making a woolly worm forecast is that not all worms are created equally. In fact, it is normal to find worms of different stripe thicknesses in the same area on the same day. That is why the festival in Banner Elk uses a race to find a forecaster. There are other ways to make a wooly worm forecast. Back in the 1940s, the insect curator of Bear Mountain State Park in New York would gather 50 woolly worms each October and average the stripes to make a forecast. He says that the worm forecast was 80 percent correct. The Banner Elk folks say their forecast is 57 percent correct. A Woolly Worm Society in Pennsylvania says that their worms are NEVER wrong!

I challenge any worm to a forecasting duel, right here on this blog. Although I don't think their fingers are long enough to type in the forecast. Hmmm.... next year I should watch out for blogging Woolly Worms.

If you are interested in the 30th Annual Woolly Worm Festival, here is their web page: http://www.woollyworm.com/

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