Winter 2020, look to mother nature for clues

In talking with a friend of mine, he asked what kind of winter we were going to have? Now I am no meteorologist, but thought I would look into natures way of offering a glimpse of what is to come. Here is what I found....

Trees know! History shows when acorns are in abundance, a rough winter is ahead. Thicker shells on hickory nuts are another tell tale sign as well. If you see squirrels foraging and scurrying about, moving and storing nuts more so than normal, this can be an indication of bad weather ahead. Thicker bark being apparent on the north side of trees indicates a rough winter as well.

Some other cool nature tell tales are woodpeckers sharing a tree, spiders spinning larger webs than normal, raccoons having thicker tails and brighter, visible bands.

Pigs gathering sticks and straw, crickets in the chimney and if Dick Goddard’s wooly bears have small rust or orange bands, we could be in for a nasty weather.

I remember watching the Beverly Hill billies growing up and granny would check her caterpillar to see what the weather was going to be.

Some may think this is crazy, but many years of records offer repetitive indicators to prove these observations to be true more than not. Even onions can predict the future. I love this gardener’ rhyme:

“Onion’s skin very thin, Mild winter coming in ; Onion’s skin thick and rough,

Coming winter cold and rough.”

Now scientifically, la nina (which is the cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the central and east- central Pacific ocean) impacts out weather. La ninas that tend to be dry in summer will be cold in winters..

We have had a ton of rain in May followed by a drought in July. So what will happen this winter? Your guess is as good as mine. We’ll just have to wait and see. Take advantage of the warmer days which are upon us. Get those fall chores done and be ready for old man winter when he sneaks in upon us.

Thanksgiving will be here before we blink and then Christmas. Things will be a little different this year thanks to the corona virus. This pandemic keeps increasing its cases daily and it is not going away. Please be vigilant in distancing from others, washing hands and exercising caution. We love our community and can not wait for things to get back to “normal”. We all must work together to achieve this. I pray for all to be safe and hope this virus starts to diminish soon. Keep the faith! Thanks for reading.