Watch for Huddling Spiders

By Elisabeth Kauffman/Crab Orchard

The woolly worms are scarce this year, maybe because of the two-month dry spell, the one that induced the maples, oaks and sycamores marching high up the mountains on the Cumberland Plateau to skip turning red and gold and go straight to dead, brittle brown. The worms that have been found, however, are solid black, while the hornets are building their nests close to the ground, and the spiders are sticking together, weaving their webs nearly on top of one another. Taken together, these and other signs mean the coming winter "is going to be a humdinger," says Helen Lane, who is famous in these parts of Tennessee for predicting the weather through nature's clues.

Lane's father taught her the nature lore, pointing out signs to the youngest of his seven children on the family farm where Lane still lives. Now Lane, 78 and frail with cancer, is passing on the knowledge to her daughter. This fall, while Lane monitored the foliage on Crab Orchard and Renegade mountains from her living-room window, Melinda Lane Hedgecoth ventured into the woods for her, reporting on how thick the fogs were, counting spider webs and spying on the hornets. She also wrote for her mother the annual fall column that Lane has written for the Crossville Chronicle for more than 50 years. "This is a wonderful heritage," Hedgecoth says. "We're going to make certain it stays alive."

To Lane, reading signs is common sense. Thicker than normal fur on wild animals is a dead giveaway that cold weather is coming. Rings around the moon mean rain or snow is on the way soon. "Nature has a way of taking care of her own," says Lane. "If you pay attention, then you know what you need to do."

She pays attention to many things. Correctly interpret the woolly worms--inch-long fuzzy caterpillars, also called woolly bears--and you can determine the winter's snowfall; the more solid-black worms, the more snow; the more solid-brown worms, the less snow. But if more worms are black on the ends and brown in the middle, that means winter will "start and end hard," Lane says, while brown ends and a black middle mean a mild fall and early spring but a harsh midwinter. Each fog forming in August foretells a measurable snowfall. Thick corn shucks also mean a cold winter. The last three days of January portend weather for the next three months, and thunder in February means there will be a frost 90 days later.

Some of Lane's signs have a sound scientific basis. Rings around the moon, for example, are usually caused by thin layers of cirrostratus clouds, which often precede storm fronts. But biologists scoff at the notion that the color of caterpillars (which merely signify different species) or where hornets' nests are can tell you anything about the weather. "It's not that we don't take her seriously," says Mike Murphy of the National Weather Service in Nashville. "It's just not the way we approach the science."

But in tiny Crab Orchard, a rock-quarry town bisected by railroad tracks, Lane's forecasts are gospel. Down at the S&H General Store, where you can eat a pretty good cheeseburger while your groceries are bagged, folks swear by Helen Lane. Kim Young, flipping burgers behind the counter, points out that Lane predicted last year's blizzard, the one that stranded motorists on nearby Interstate 24 and left the entire area without electricity for days. "When she says a storm is coming, you better get to the store and buy whatever you need to make it through a few days without power, 'cause it's certain to happen."

Lane recalls the time her father warned neighbors that Crab Orchard Mountain was roaring, as if the cold north wind sweeping down the peaks had awakened a dragon sleeping deep inside. "He told me that when I heard that mountain roar, a bad storm was coming, and sure enough, a blizzard hit that night." The last time she heard the mountain roar was in 1993. That night 22 inches of snow fell.

Bent from arthritis, these days Lane is confined to her small living room and a reclining chair, able to walk only with help. Still, her winter forecast is an annual ritual for Tennessee reporters, who flock to her door and ring her phone off the hook. She has been invited to appear on David Letterman and Live with Regis & Kathie Lee, she says. The oddest to her, though, was a reporter who phoned all the way from Anchorage, where "I don't know they'd even know what a woolly worm is," she says. "It'd freeze to death there."