Man - hard to tell what winter will bring this season. Here's a run down of what I've seen so far:

1. Old Farmer's Almanac - cold and snowy winter with some of the deepest cold towards the end of the season.

2. Accuweather - colder than normal winter with normal precipitation.

3. Hagerstown Almanac - winter will not be particularly "deep or intense" - i.e., mild weather.

4. Wooly bear caterpillars - normal for the first half and spring-like for the second half of the season.

All signs point to:

Clean Your Gutters and Check Your Sump Pump

All the wooly worms up here are completely black. *Crosses my fingers*

Wooly worms scare me...

I've seen 1 black head brown body and 1 all black wolly worm. Hmmmmm......

The nut trees were heavy this year and the squirrels bushy tailed. Let's hope....

Actually Accuweather's long-term forecast, at http://wwwa.accuweather.com/adcbin/public/promotional.asp?type=winter calls for MAJOR snow and much colder weather. And I have been in WV for the past three months and the wooly worms are SOLID black. Snow is coming!!!!