Punxsutawney PA has a groundhog. Banner Elk NC has woolly worms. Both are tasked with predicting the winter weather. And both have a fun festival surrounding their predictions.
Every third weekend in October, more than 20,000 people descend upon Banner Elk to watch the woolly worms race their way to the top of a 3 foot rope for a chance to be named the official winter weather forecaster of the year. Woolly worms have 13 segments and winter has 13 weeks. What better way to predict each week’s weather than by the color of the winning worm’s segments? A black segment means the week will be cold and snowy. Dark brown correlates to below average temperatures and light brown to above average. Flick (black and brown) means there will be frost or light snow.
There are 30+ races on both Saturday and Sunday. Winners of their heats advance through semi-final rounds until the official winner is declared. Although there is a winning woolly worm each day, only Saturday’s winner is the official winter weather prognosticator. Winners on Sunday are just in it for the small cash prizes and the glory.
Although some people bring their own woolly worms, you can also purchase or rent them at the festival. In order to ensure there were enough worms to race all day on Sunday, the worms were only available for rental on that day. For $2 you could rent a worm for your race(s) and then collect $1 back if you returned it at the end. (There was also a spot on the stage to donate them, essentially forgoing your $1 deposit.)
It cost $8 to enter the race. After filling out a form with your name, hometown and your worm’s name and paying the fee, you are assigned to a race and a rope number. We were assigned to race #28 (rope 4) and only had to wait about 30 minutes until it was our turn. There are 25 worms in each heat and they put the worms’ names above their rope in each round.
Each race lasts a few minutes (depending on how fast the worms go). Our race had a false start and a disqualification. One worm was disqualified for not being an actual woolly worm. It was some other similar looking breed of caterpillar that is apparently much faster. The officials caught the imposter while they were lining up and replaced it with an actual woolly worm. Then at the start someone dropped their worm so officials stopped the race to let them regroup and everyone started again. Unfortunately, our worm Bunson got off to a great start the first time but not so much the second time. He was nowhere near the front of the pack but the boys enjoyed the excitement of the race.
Aside from the races, the festival hosts over 150 vendors selling everything from coffee to crafts. We always love wandering the tents in festivals like these and finding unique works from local artists. This time we came home with a pumpkin carved out of a tree stump from Bear Creek Carvings and some really cool metal figures from Happy Skraps. And of course you can’t go to a festival without getting some funnel cake!
This was not our first time at the Woolly Worm Festival. On one of our weekend mountain trips 8 years ago, we stumbled upon it and the boys have been talking about it ever since. Now that the kids are older, I love returning to places we went to when they were little to see how much it has changed and how much they have changed. The boys have definitely gotten bigger in the last eight years and the festival has too. But it has maintained its small town quirky charm. It is one of those events that is really fun to just wander around and enjoy the atmosphere.
