With the winter solstice now less than a month away and it feeling on some days here like winter rather than autumn, I look again for the signs in nature that supposedly foretell the winter ahead.
I have written before about the weather lore of the Wooly Bear caterpillar. Woolly bears have 13 segments which are colored black and reddish-brown. Weather lore says that fat caterpillars and the colors of the wooly bear type predict the upcoming winter. The wider a woolly bear’s middle brown section is, the milder the winter. On the other hand, if there is more black than brown, the upcoming winter should prove harsh.
It seems that 8 of 9 of these Paradelle Wooly Bear caterpillars are telling me that it will be a mild winter here. They don’t much care either way because no matter what winter is like this year they will be hiding frozen under leaf litter until spring.
I am still looking out my window at autumn and the winter solstice is a month away, but the predictions of the winter ahead are showing up. Mother Nature doesn’t really pay much attention to the calendar, astronomical events, or the predictions of humans.
I always do some winter weather prediction posts because I found that even he oldest ones still show up as getting attention as autumn turns to winter. people really want to know what is ahead – even if predictions are often wrong. November is also a month for election predictions which also have some science but a lot of inaccuracies.
Winter in Paradelle is really winter in New Jersey, a state that is located about halfway between the Equator and the North Pole. According to Rutgers University Climate Lab, annual snowfall in the state averages 40 to 50 inches in the northern zone as compared with an average of 10-15 inches in the extreme south. But for the winter of 2022, the average was a mere 3 inches. Climate change or weather patterns? That was the second least snowy season on record across the state.
AccuWeather unveiled their early winter forecast in early October, predicting a snowier winter than last year for the New Jersey region (including the New York and Philadelphia metro areas) but still slightly less snow than average because of the El Niño weather pattern. They predict that this winter’s heavier snow activity may come in waves, starting with one batch in November, followed by a quiet December, then an active period in 2024.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac says the Atlantic corridor, which includes New Jersey, can expect more snow than usual during the winter season of 2023-2024. They say that the snowiest periods will occur at the end of December, late January, and mid-February.
If you want to see where it is snowing around the Earth right now, check out the Global Snow Lab website.
Last year I was raking leaves and being bombarded by falling acorns. The ground was covered with them and the squirrels and chipmunks were going crazy. I wrote about predictions of a “mast year” in 2021.
Acorns and other fruits, nuts, berries, and buds produced by trees and bushes are called “mast.” Hard mast is the name for acorns, walnuts, pecans, hickory nuts, and hard seeds. (Buds are soft mast.) A mast year is a year when the amount of that mast is unusually high in number,
Meager pickings in my backyard so far this year
This year, I am seeing very few acorns and quite small ones in my neighborhood. I have read that acorn production runs in cycles of two to five years, so perhaps this is all normal in this cycle.
More like what the critters are hoping to find.
In the lore of weather predictions and nature signs about the seasons, a lot of acorns are said to be a sign of a bad winter to come. “Squirrels gathering nuts in a flurry will cause snow to gather in a hurry.” But if the acorns are scarce, wouldn’t the critters be even more likely to go into a flurry to gather as much as possible? Should I interpret the meager acorn crop as meaning a mild winter?
I wrote last week about the interesting but unscientific prediction of a bad winter based on the acorn harvest which is one of many weather lore ideas. Someone contacted me to say they spotted “black deer” in their neighborhood and that predicts a bad winter. But on the more scientific but not always accurate side of predicting the weather, the NOAA has put out their notice on how La Niña may affect the winter of 2021-22 in America.
A look at La Nina along the equator in the tropical Pacific Ocean in September 2021. (NOAA Climate.gov)
In what is called a “La Niña winter,” the southern U.S. gets above-average temperatures and below-average precipitation. That could be bad news for the Southwest and areas dealing with a historic drought.
La Niña tends to have the opposite effect on the northern U.S., meaning lower than average temperatures with more snow and rain.
Even the NOAA folks add the caveat that a more exact forecast of temperature, snow, and rain isn’t possible until winter has arrived.
What is La Niña? It is when cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures along the equator indicate La Niña will develop. In September they saw it had developed and will extend through the second winter in a row according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. La Niña is a natural ocean-atmospheric phenomenon and is translated from Spanish as “little girl.”
In 2020, La Niña developed during the month of August and then dissipated in April 2021.
Acorns have been bombing my home’s roof and deck and pinging the roof of the metal shed in the backyard heavily since late summer. The quantity of acorns seems to vary from year to year. This year might be what is known as a “mast year.”
I had to look up what a mast year means. The fruits, nuts, berries, and buds produced by trees and bushes are called “mast.” Things like walnuts, pecans, hickory nuts, hard seeds, and acorns are called hard masts, and berries and fruits, and buds are soft mast. A mast year is a year when the amount of that mast is unusually high in number,
Since my first association with the word “mast” is with a sailing ship, I had to check the etymology of this botanical usage. It comes from Middle English and earlier Old English mete similar to mæst in Old High German where it meant food. If you think of an acorn as food (many animals and some humans do) then inside that shell is the meat.
Can we predict these cycles of acorn plenty? Do we know why they occur? There are theories but it is still mostly a mystery.
These mast years seem to occur in irregular cycles of two to five years. An abundance of acorns is often said to be a nature sign of a bad winter. The folk belief is that squirrels, chipmunks, mice and other animals somehow know that they need to stock up for a bad winter and that nature somehow knows to increase the supply chain of acorns. But there’s no real science behind that folk wisdom and weather lore. that they need to stock up. The Farmers’ Almanac – which has lots of folklore around weather – seems to indicate that if acorn numbers mean a bad winter then almost every year is a bad winter.
But I continue and observe and write about signs of the seasons in nature and keep a nature calendar.
Squirrels, mice, chipmunks and deer feed on the acorns in my neighborhood. When the trees produce smaller crops for a few consecutive years, they are in effect keeping the populations of these animals in check. But during a mast year, the trees produce more food than the animals can possibly eat.
This abundance causes a boom in the populations of smaller mammals. It also guarantees that some acorns will survive and grow into new trees. Producing nuts slightly stunts the tree’s growth, but as it happens in cycles the tree gets a chance for growth in the non-mast years. Living things generally live to reproduce.
Chipmunks hibernate in cold weather and so in Paradelle, they spend most of the winter sleeping in their dens. I read that one chipmunk can gather up to 165 acorns in a day. But those cute little Disneyesque critters don’t just eat acorns. Along with seeds and fungi, they will eat grain, fruit, nuts, insects, and worms. I was surprised to find that though they don’t hunt for bird eggs and even nestling birds and baby mice, they will eat them when they find them. They also love to dig in my outdoor potted plants, so cute as Chip and dale might be, they are also pests around here.
In 2020, the chipmunk population locally was insanely large. This year I barely saw any – until the acorns started to fall in late August and now they are all over my backyard and deck. Where were they all spring and summer?
In reading the novel The Overstory by Richard Powers and some other research as a follow-up. I learned a lot about trees. For example, most people probably believe that trees compete with each other for sunlight, water, and nutrients. That isn’t true. In fact, in most settings, they communicate and cooperate.
With acorns, temperature and moisture are probably factors in these cycles, and now it is theorized that oaks might be sending chemical signals to coordinate their production. In my part of the country (Northeast) last winter and spring were generally mild winter and so white and red oak trees are able to produce more of them when they start creating seeds in the spring. A harsh winter or cold spring or freeze can mean little acorn production, or sometimes none at all.
There are still mysteries in all this. How trees communicate with each other is still being explored. We can’t predict when any one species will have a mast year.
but we do better understand what causes it. The weather certainly has a part to play. To produce a healthy crop, the trees need the right combination of temperature and rainfall in the spring.
Phenology is the study of the timing of natural events in relation to the weather. This is the scientific version of weather lore and the studies continue.
SIDEBAR: Can humans safely eat acorns? Yes, they can be used in a variety of ways. They can be eaten whole, ground up into acorn meal or flour, or made into mush to have their oil extracted. Once you’ve safely leached the tannins from your raw acorns, you can roast them for 15 to 20 minutes and sprinkle them with salt for a snack. I haven’t tried eating yet, but maybe this is a good year for it.
Whatever the weather is like the first twelve days of January is supposed to indicate what the weather will be like for the next 12 solar months. Each day equals one month in succession. So, January 6 would predict June’s weather. This is one weather lore predictor that is quite extreme and wholly unscientific – but perhaps fun.
Of course, January would have been the time to pay attention, so I guess I should repost this in January 2022, but you can find your local weather history online since I doubt that anyone recalls what the weather was like in January. You can find information at sites like weather.com
For New Jersey, I went to njweather.org for a recap on this past January’s weather just to see if there was any correlation to this month. I also looked at accuweather.com which told me that on January 6 it was a high of 43 and a low of 32 degrees. That is a normal range for a Jersey January and June was an average Jersey June – which means days in the 70s, 80s and the 90s. It’s a mixed month.
I don’t really think of weather in collective terms like months or even the year. I am more likely to remark about or remember a week. “It was a rainy week.”
Though I occasionally write here about weather lore, I don’t take it very seriously. It is fun and sometimes it happens to match the actual weather, which is why these kinds of beliefs linger on.
A snowy February is supposed to bring a good spring and a mild month means stormy weather for the new season. Compare that to prognosticating groundhogs and other critters.
In any season, a ring around the Moon is supposed to mean precipitation is coming.
If the Moon shows a silver shield, be not afraid to reap your field. I’m not sure what a silver shield on the Moon means – and I have no fields to harvest – so that one I can ignore.
Weekends in Paradelle 