The 2025-2026 Winter Weather Forecast

From Time to Thyme

By Paula Dunn

I usually run the winter weather forecast column during the first part of October, but I procrastinated this year because it was so hot then. I figured I’d stand a better chance of getting persimmon seed predictions if I waited until the weather was cooler. (Persimmons don’t usually drop to the ground until there’s a chill in the air.)

The wait paid off. All three of my usual persimmon seed splitters were able to find some seeds to split.

(Remember, I am NO Clara Hoover. She was an expert at turning folk signs into a coherent weather forecast. I don’t have that skill. I just provide the data and let YOU try to make sense of it.)

The first folk sign to take into account is the number of fogs in August. Clara said that indicates how many big snows to expect.

Counting fogs was a little confusing this year. The only time I saw fog in Hamilton County on the WISH-TV fog map was August 7.  When I searched timeanddate.com, however, fogs showed up on August 1 and August 13, and Jeanne Flanders, who lives in the countryside north of here, reported a light fog on August 27.

I guess we can say there will be at least one big snow, but no more than four?

The next thing to consider is the direction of the wind around the autumn equinox.

The wind the day before the equinox foretells the weather to expect in November and December, the equinox wind predicts January and February, and the wind the day after the equinox indicates what March and April will bring.

I used timeanddate.com for the wind directions. That website shows weather conditions at a specified location (I use Noblesville since it’s in the center of the county) at midnight, 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m.

On Sept. 21, the wind came from the east, the southeast and the south (both noon and 6 p.m.) On the equinox, Sept. 22, the wind was from the south, southwest, east/southeast and south. The Sept. 23 wind came from the southwest, south/southwest, south and southwest.

According to the chart Clara left, north winds indicate cold weather, northeast winds mean heavy snow and northwest winds foretell blizzard conditions. East winds foretell “wet cold,” west winds point to cooler weather and south winds forecast fair weather. Southwest winds are a sign of fair and cooler weather.

Unfortunately, Clara didn’t leave an interpretation for southeast winds, but south seems to have been the predominant direction on both Sept. 21 and 22, so maybe we should go with that.

On to the wooly worms! Clara’s chart says brown wooly worms indicate fair weather, black ones are a sign of cold weather and white ones mean more snow than usual.

Thanks to Ed and Claire Snyder, Lisa Hayner, Nancy Massey, Jeanne Flanders, Michael Kobrowski, Bonnie Zarins and Barbara Glunt I received plenty of wooly worm sightings.

I got so many photos, in fact, that it’s a little hard to say which color predominates. The color least seen was white (Yay!,) but it was a close race between the all black ones and the brown ones with black ends for the color most often reported.

(The black AND brown bicolored ones aren’t on Clara’s chart. There’s a theory, however, that they indicate a cold beginning and end to winter, with a warmer period in the middle.)

The persimmon seeds were a little more consistent.

The seeds split by both Bonnie Zarins and my cousin, Barbara Glunt, showed spoons. Steve Owens split 6 seeds and came up with one fork, two knives and three spoons.

According to Clara, forks indicate bitter cold, knives predict fair weather and spoons mean we’ll be shoveling lots of snow.

Drat! Better keep your snow shovel handy, just in case.

Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at younggardenerfriend@gmail.com