Folklore says that the presence of spoons, forks, or knives in the local native persimmon seeds will predict the winter weather.
This is the seed I just cracked open:
It is said that the spoon symbolizes there will be need for a snow shovel.
Ha. I knew it. With Lake Michigan being warmer than usual we’ll get our fill of lake effect snow this year.
True, but a milder winter means we get a break on the cost of heating fuel. I can handle a bit of snow shoveling for that.
djm
I need to go look for some wooly caterpillars…
My big, huge, and very old oak tree in the back yard had an excessive amount of acorns on it this year. I have no idea if that means anything, but it would seem to me that it means we’re in for a hard winter (at least for Ohio standards…being from upstate NY, hard winter has much larger connotations). Has anyone ever heard whether or not large amounts of acorns means a hard winter?
Oh, look . . . another advantage of living here.
Average high (June-September) is 90F/32C to 75F/24C.
Average low (December-February) is 68F/19C to 52F/12C.
I miss snow . . . 
. . .
Regrettably, my maximum heat tolerance is 17C for comfortable. Anything over 20C is too hot, and I hide in the refrigerator until it goes away. I don’t mind winter down to -20C, but below that my truck tends to freeze up.
Besides getting snow, the best thing about winter is the clear dry air, and the way the snow screams under your feet, like walking on sheets of styrofoam. Everything sounds far away, and there’s usually the smell of wood smoke coming from somewhere.
I think I’ll retire to the west coast, thanks, despite the many attractions of down south. West seems more my style.
djm
There is a persimmon tree across the street from where I live. The land belongs to the city school district, so people use the large area as public space to walk their dogs and play with their children. In previous years I have seen people bring ladders to pick the persimmon fruit. Persimmons are ripe and ready to eat this time of year. All of the leaves have fallen from the tree, and only the little persimmon fruits are on the tree. They are delicious right off the tree when the fruit is soft and mussy. I ate one this morning. Take my advice, however, and don’t try eating one before they get soft and mussy. You wil be sorry, as the inside of your mouth will feel like you tried to eat a cotton ball, and that feeling won’t go away for some time.
By the way, the three little seeds in the persimmon fruit are quite beautiful, and the bark of the tree is rather unique, looking something like aligator skin. I tried to crack open the seed to confirm Walden’s finding, but I decided to stop before I either cut off or mashed my fingers. The seeds are tough and difficult to break open. So trying to determine whether we will have a long Winter, I will have to use a different method.
My crystal ball says that some days will be warm and some will be cold. Oh well, so much for forecasting.
Too many people have done this, and it’s a big reason they so often go uneaten. It’s too bad. They really are nice-tasting fruit once absolutely ripe.
I know. 
These seeds have no natural tendency to be split in half, whatsoever.
Oaks and beeches have occasional very good “acorn” or “mast” years. These “good” years are a result of preceding favourable conditions in respect of the weather at pollination time (these trees are wind-pollinated), temperature and water availability. The tree uses up a lot of energy and food materials in producing all this fruit and it is unlikely that two such “good” years will occur in succession even if conditions seem favourable. A related phenomenon occurs in some apple varieties: a bumper year may be followed by a much poorer crop the following year even if conditions were favourable at flowering time. This is termed “biennial cropping.” Wise gardeners try to circumvent this by much judicious thinning of a heavy crop whilst it’s still immature, ensuring that the tree doesn’t use most of its resources in a single season to the detriment of the crop the following year. Whilst it’s attractive to think that bumper crops presage harsh winters, I fear that the true explanation is far more prosaic. Statistics have shown that there’s no link - which doesn’t mean you won’t get a harsh winter this time!
Steve
Ocean temperatures are still higher than average, and this is what is being used to predict a milder than average coming winter this year.
djm
And here I thought I was on to something. Oh well…I’ll just have to go back to looking at the wooly bears I guess 
Those ocean temperatures are being used to predict a severe winter for the UK (though you lot over there would laugh at what we call “severe” ). Mind you, they predicted a hot summer this year which we most decidedly didn’t get. There were even heatwave warning notices up in hospitals and medical centres. I’m a chaos theory chap myself!
Steve
What we call a severe winter in Oklahoma: It snows an inch or two, then the sun comes out and melts it slightly, which promptly refreezes overnight. Next morning another snow hits, followed by a rain and ice storm, leaving a thick sheet of ice over everything, including people’s lawns. This ice sits on the brink between freezing and thawing, so that it is so slippery it’s nearly impossible to walk on, especially on hills. The ice gathers on the trees, causing them to fall on the power lines, leaving hundreds of people without electric power. They are without electric power (and, in some cases, without heat) for days, because the weather has the rural roads blocked.
NAmerica is too huge to cast such generalities. A mild winter is relative, obviously. For us here, it means not as cold, but that doesn’t mean it won’t get cold, or that we won’t get even more snow than usual. Long term forecasts are pretty loose in the best light, and can’t be given too much weight.
djm
I’ve lived in my Cornwall house for 19 years and I haven’t seen complete snow-cover once in my garden in all that time. This year we had a frost-free January (very unusual). So far we haven’t had anything even approaching a frost this autumn. The lowest daytime maximum so far has been 13 celsius, 55 Fahrenheit on November 2. It’s extremely rare to get a day on which the temperature doesn’t go above zero (32 F). We had a run of several such days in January 1987. We do get a lot of driving rain and gales in winter. It isn’t quite so mild in the rest of the UK. Except on higher ground, lying snow is usually short-lived. Average daily maxima in the coldest part of the year are around 7 to 9 C (45 to 48 F).
Can anyone tell me how to do that little circle symbol for degrees on my keyboard?
Steve
Ordinarily snow melts off pretty quick here, too.
One way is to use Character Map, assuming it’s installed on your computer. Another way is to look up a temperature at Yahoo, or such and cut and paste. Our high, today, is predicted to be 71° Fahrenheit. Also, there is this page, which shows you how to type all sorts of symbols: http://www.theworldofstuff.com/characters/
This reminds me of the severe ice storm that we had last January in the county where I grew up as a child. Three inches of ice clinged to everything with catastrophic damage to trees. The woods where my father was living was visually transformed into an ice wonderland, but it was very dangerous to be outside. You could hear the loud snapping of branches breaking overhead and falling to the ground. Since this ice event covered several counties of the state, thousands of people were without electrical power (no furnaces) during the coldest part of the winter. One neighbor was so traumatised by the event that he didn’t even plant his garden in the Spring. He was still trying to recover psychologically.
It’s 14° today. Wahoo, I did degrees! 
Steve