Winter Folklore, Natures Way of When, Where, and How cold

[CaptinCrunch]

This is a place to talk about the folklore of winter, just like Grandpa use to tell use.


From what I can remember some of the signs of a early winter was looking at the trees and animals.
Here the pecan trees have already started dropping pecans early, and the acorn trees are loaded to the hilt, the most I seen in recent years.
I also noticed pinecones dropping off the pine trees on our street. We have had a much better summer as far as rain goes, and our 5 day forecast has some chance of rain in it every day from 20%-50%, with a wet trend setting up already and we are just starting September here. I haven't seen much change in the animals as far as winter coats go, but our potbelly pigs are sleeping in their houses more now (which they only do when it starts to get cooler).

I know high temps are still getting up to the lower 90's, but that is still cooler than the normal upper 90's to 100 that we usally get well into September.
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?site=fwd&map.x=181&map.y=113

Hopefully this is a good sign of things to come for this winter.

[iorange55]

I don't know if this has anything to do with anything, but we've had a ton of more bugs trying to invade the house. More crickets, and ants. We hadn't been having trouble with them for a few summers now, but this late summer/early fall they're all over the place.

[breeze]

The old folks always told us to look at the "wooly worms" - which is actually the caterpillar
of the Isabella tiger moth. If the reddish-orange bands around it are thin, it's going to be a
bad winter. Of course, thicker bands would be a milder winter.

Honestly, I've never seen two alike, so it's about as predictable as some of the long-term
forecasts for this area...