Not-So-Hot News Flash

After last winter's giant wallop, what is in store this year? Official U.S. long-range-weather forecasters are hedging their bets, but others are not. The 1978 edition of the Old Farmer's Almanac, out last week, predicts that the Northeast is in for a particularly "cold and gloomy" winter. Snowfall will be 15 to 20 in. above average. The chill will descend as far south as Florida. A moderate winter is predicted for the rest of the country--but folkloric weathermen in the Midwest cite a number of telltale signs that point in the opposite direction: bears are fat and getting fatter, woolly bears (caterpillars) have thin brown bands across their middles and are moving fast, bushy-tailed squirrels are laying in extra supplies of acorns, bark on trees is extra thick. Onions are sporting thick skins, and everyone knows: "Onion skins very tough, winter's going to be very rough." Both the Almanac and the woolly bears, by the way, were right on in their predictions that last winter would be a brutal one.

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