Science: Wooly Weather Prophet

In the spring, a young man's fancy; in the fall, woolly bear caterpillars have a brown band in their midriffs. If the brown band is wide, it will be a mild winter. If the brown band is narrow, the winter will be a freezeroo. So countrymen in the northeastern states have believed.

A year ago, Dr. C. Howard Curran, curator of insects and spiders at New York's American Museum of Natural History, took a look at the woolly bear caterpillars and noted that they all had narrow bands. Sure enough, along came last winter's big snow and ice storms....