Dick Goddard hosts the 39th Annual Woollybear Parade & Festival, Vermilion, Ohio, Sunday, October 9, 2011.
The Banded Wooly Bear (Pyrrharctia isabella). Top - the familiar larva stage. Bottom - few people will recognize the Isabella Tiger Moth as the adult or ‘imago’ stage. (The smaller the dark band on the caterpillar – the more severe will be the winter, as the folklore goes.)
The Woollybear Festival is the largest one day festival in the state of Ohio. Cleveland’s Fox 8 Meteorologist Dick Goddard hosts the fun-filled events when the 39th Annual Woollybear Parade & Festival takes over Vermilion, Ohio on Sunday, October 9, 2010.
The woollybear wackiness all started more than three decades ago. Northeast Ohio TV weatherman Dick Goddard of Fox8 TV in Cleveland talked with some friends and co-workers about his idea of a celebration built around using the woollybear to forecast what kind of winter is ahead.
The first Woollybear Festival attracted perhaps 2,000 people but now the event attracts an estimated 15,000 and features the Woollybear Parade, one of the largest parades in the state of Ohio. It starts at 1:30 pm and lasts approximately 2 hours. It includes the Woollybear kids and pets, over 15 marching bands with nearly 2,000 musicians, radio and TV personalities, vintage automobiles, floats animals, festival queens, clowns and much more!