Features
Woman says she can predict the weather
With all of the technology used to predict the weather today, meteorologists think they have it down to a science. But Sheridan’s Clara Hoover relies solely on woolly worms, persimmon seeds and shifts in the wind to make her forecasts, strategies she said are 80 percent accurate.
Weather reports and almanacs may be useful to some people, but Hoover doesn’t need them for her predictions. In fact, she thinks they’re flat wrong many times.
“They say I am 100 percent better than they are,” she said. “I’ve been in this for 40 years.”
Hoover, who is in her 90s and lives at the Sheridan Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center, became interested in predicting the weather following the Palm Sunday tornado that skipped right over her house on April 11, 1965. Hoover said she read about forecasting methods in the newspaper soon after and started doing her own research from there, gathering old folk traditions and sayings and putting them to the test.
One method Hoover uses is woolly worms, a black and brown caterpillar common throughout North America, whose markings are traditionally used by folk forecasters to determine the severity of the coming winter. Black markings indicate cold weather, while brown indicates mild.
Hoover said she has had forecast requests from Illinois, Michigan and even New York. A reporter called her from New York to get her winter forecast. Despite the distance, he insisted Hoover make a prediction.
“So I said okay, I will,” Hoover said. “I said you’re going to have a cold winter, you’re going to have a heavy snow...Do you know what they had? They had a blizzard.”
Debbie Lawson, activity director for the Healthcare Center, affirms that Hoover’s forecasts are usually pretty accurate.
“She does pretty good,” she said. “I kind of watch her. She’s usually pretty close.”
Hoover prints up her forecasts as flyers and distributes them throughout the nursing home, but that doesn’t cut down on the forecast requests she gets on a daily basis.
“She is asked all the time,” Lawson said. “Everybody asks her, everybody goes to her. They’re interested in what she has to say.”
Hoover is proud of her reputation, which she has worked on for 40 years.
“I’ll tell you this,” Hoover said. “You ask anybody out there, anybody: Here, Noblesville, Kirkland, Tipton, anybody. They say I am the best.”
ClaraCast
Here are the summer’s weekly forecasts according to Clara:
June 7: Wind and rain
June 15: Frequent showers
June 21: Frequent showers
June 28: Fair
July 7: Fair
July 15: Fair
July 21: Fair
July 28: Fair
August 5: Rain
August 13: Frequent showers
July 20: Fair
July 27: Fair
September 4: Rain
September 11: Wind and rain
September 18 Changeable
September 26: Very rainy
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