Woolly Worm Festival

Banner Elk welcomes old and new friends to the Woolly Worm Festival, co-hosted by the Avery County Chamber of Commerce and the Banner Elk Kiwanis Club. More than 20,000 people come for woolly worm races, craft and food vendors, live entertainment and children's activities. The winning worm earns its owner the job of predicting high-country winter weather. A woolly worm has 13 body segments, one for each of 13 winter weeks: black means snow and below-average cold, fleck means light snow or frost, and brown means average temperatures. About 100 vendors and 1,000 worms are part of the gathering.

Our take: Watch the worm race if you care about the winter forecast, since each segment of the winning worm maps to a week of high-country weather.