Wooly Worm Festival 47th Annual Sugar Mountain
Sun, Oct 20
|Banner Elk
Official Woolly Worm Festival of North Carolina at Sugar Mountain
Time & Location
Oct 20, 2024, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Banner Elk, 185 Azalea Cir SE, Banner Elk, NC 28604, USA
About the event
Where to Stay?
Check Carolina Mountains Vacation Rentals has plenty of options less than 10 minutes to the Wooly Worm Festival. Don't wait to book this popular weekend.
Festival Info and Tickets here
Featured on CBS Sunday Morning Show in 2023. Check it out here.
History of the Wooly Worm Festival in Sugar Mountain NC.
Since 1978, the residents of the village nestled between the Carolina’s largest ski resorts have celebrated the coming of the snow season with a Woolly Worm Festival. They set aside the third weekend in October to determine which worm will have the honor of predicting the severity of the coming winter, and they let that worm earn the honor by winning heat after heat of hard-fought races up a three-foot length of string.
The Woolly Bear caterpillar has 13 brown and black segments, which the late Charles Von Canon explained to the small crowd huddled together in the sub-freezing temperatures at the first Woolly Worm Festival correspond to the 13 weeks of winter. The lighter brown a segment is, the milder that week of winter will be. The darker black a segment is, the colder and snowier the corresponding week will be.
The festival has grown to over 20,000 worm-loving guests. This is a one of a kind festival great for families (sorry, no pets allowed).