A Chill in the Air - Forecasting Winter Weather the Old Timey Way

The weather team got together on the local news the other day and did an exhaustive (and exhausting to watch) winter forecast, the gist of which was that it’s going to get cold.

A few days later the Washington Post published an entire section devoted to winter weather. Again, cold.

If you want to know what it’s going to be like this winter, it’s too late to do your own forecasting. You should have started months ago by checking the wooly worms.

That’s how Helen Lane, the Weather Lady of Crab Orchard, did it.

46 years ago, when I was the editor of Knoxville magazine, I assigned a writer to drive down to Crab Orchard, an hour west, to interview Helen, who was already world famous. Even Life magazine had written about her uncannily accurate weather forecasts based on the thickness of the corn’s husk and the color of the wooly worm’s coat.

The writer that I assigned was me, since the magazine was on the precipice of folding (we did a month after publishing Helen’s story) and we had no money to pay a freelancer.

Helen told me her secrets, not that I could replicate them.

She died in 2000 but she passed on her abilities to her youngest daughter, Melinda Lane Hedgecoth,

Here’s how she explained her weather wizardry to me in 1973:

It’s gonna be “rough” this winter. Oh, it won’t be a "humdinger.” Like the winter of ’59 was a “humdinger.” That was the winter with 6 feet of snow. But there were five fogs in August this summer. And the crickets have been hollering in the chimney corner. The fat hornet’s nests have been low to the ground. And the squirrel’s tail has been fluffy. And according to Helen Lane, the Weather Woman of Crab Orchard, those are the signals for a rough winter.

Helen Lane has been predicting the weather for as long as she can remember. Her father Charlie Sherrill taught her how. And his father before him had taught him. The art has been passed down from an early Sherrill ancestor who crossed the Atlantic as a stowaway on a German freighter, landed in Virginia, and was taken in by the Indians who taught him the ways of the weather.

All total Helen’s family has been watching the thickness of the corn husks and the fogs in August and all the other secret signals Mother Nature provides the careful observer for over 300 years. And while other farmers around Crab Orchard have had their bean crops destroyed by frost, the Sherrill’s have always managed to harvest their crops at just the right time.

The youngest of seven children, Helen was the only one who learned her nature lessons. While her brothers and sisters were busy dating and partying, Helen was listening closely as her father told her “Thunder in December means its gonna be a good fruit year, thunder in January wakes the snakes, and thunder in February gives you the frost dates for May.” Not that Helen didn’t enjoy life. She found time to marry James Lane and have four children, now ranging in age from 26 to 9, and even got herself a job at Stuckey’s to help bring in a little extra money. But all the while she was comparing the realities of nature with the lessons her father had taught her. And it always matched.

It was in 1959 when Helen made her first prediction in the Crossville Chronicle. She had observed 12 fogs in August, an unusually thick shell on the walnuts and low hornet’s nests. She warned everyone that it was gonna be a “humdinger.” And when the season ended and all her predictions, including six feet of snow, had been borne out, the Chronicle reran her predictions of six months before on the front page. Ever since then her annual predictions have become a standard around east Tennessee.

How accurate is she? “Nature’s always 100 per cent accurate,” she says. A number of years ago WSM-TV in Nashville invited her down to compare her forecasts against their own weatherman. “I was so nervous, but when I got there, I found out he was more nervous than I was. He kept making mistakes and finally they had to do the show all over again because he was so nervous. In the end he was 80 per cent right and they said I was 100 per cent right.”

But things aren’t like they were when she first began predicting. “Pollution has changed things. It’s a lot harder to predict now.”

Helen has eight main indicators of winter weather:

1) The Fogs in August. “For every fog in the early morning when the dew is still on the ground, there will be a big snow in winter. Small fogs indicate ‘blue darters’ or small, wind-driven snows.”

2) The Thickness of the Corn Husks. “The thicker the husk, the rougher the winter.”

3) The Appearance of Ground Spiders in the Fall. The more numerous, the harder the winter.

4) The Crickets in the Chimney Corner. “When a rough winter is coming on, the crickets holler long and loud.”

5) The Squirrel’s Tail. The fluffier the tail, the harder the impending winter.

6) Bumps on the Treebark. When the trees have little bumps with what looks like sawdust coming out of them, it will be a hard winter.

7) The Fat Hornet’s Nest. “When the nests are high, it will be a mild winter, but when the nests are built low, look out.”

8) The Hulls of the Walnuts and Hickory Nuts. “The thicker, the worse the winter.”

Mrs. Lane does more than just predict the winters, she can also forecast other weather phenomenon The first katydid in July forecasts the first frost in October. And thunder in February signals the frost dates for May. She tells the story about a few years ago when a tremendous thunder storm frightened everyone on the 27th of February. She marked it on her calendar, but never did get around to including it in her newspaper stories. Sure enough on May 27th the frost came and a man down the road lost his whole bean crop valued at $3,000.

In the 14 years since she went public with her predictions, Helen Lane has become world famous. Life magazine did a story on her. So did the National Enquirer. And every year as winter nears, her front room becomes an interview room as the reporters and writers gather round to hear what’s in store for the coming season. She no longer has a phone, so the reporters have to come in person to hear her forecasts. But several years ago when she did have a phone, a San Francisco radio talk show called and put her on the air live. Little did they know that her phone was part of a nine-party line. Every time Helen got going good, talking about her predictions, a baby somewhere on the line would pick up the phone and say “Hello Mama.” And some people have confused her with Jeanne Dixon. Recently two women drove down from Knoxville and offered her money to tell their fortune. “Maybe I ought to get a bandanna and a crystal ball and make some money,” she says. But she says she has no supernatural powers, she only “observes nature.”

It is a sad fact that Helen Lane, despite her world-wide fame as the Weather Woman of Crab Orchard, has never made any money from her predictions. “Oh, the Crossville paper paid me twice in 14 years and they gave me envelopes and stationery. But they didn’t even give me stamps. And once a tire salesman gave me $25 for a tape recording he did of me to use to sell his snow tire commercials.” She is now working on a book about her history of weather forecasts and perhaps that will remedy the situation.

As for this coming winter, well, you’d be wise to carry in some extra firewood and maybe break out your long handles. It’s gonna be “rough.”

But not a “humdinger.”

Readers of KNOXVILLE Magazine will be pleased to learn that beginning in the January issue Helen Lane will be writing a monthly column about the weather and her observations of nature. She will be paid for her contributions.

Readers of this blog will be saddened to know that KNOXVILLE Magazine ceased publication before we could publish Helen’s first column. Or pay her.

Cover of the final issue of Knoxville Magazine: