Ready Or Not: Fall Arrives Monday Night

DETROIT (CBS Detroit) - Get your corduroys ready. Fall officially arrives Monday at around 10:30 p.m.

The Autumnal Equinox means there will be exactly 12 hours of darkness and 12 hours of daylight, beginning tonight.

Peter Geiger from the "Farmers' Almanac" says there will be more and more hours of darkness.

"And for some people that doesn't matter, and for some people it does," Geiger told WWJ Newsradio 950. "I mean, depending on how the darkness affects people, it could make you more depressed, it could make you just more blah and less energetic.

"But you know, it's part of the seasonality of the world, and I think, overall, we tend to cope with it pretty well."

According to Geiger, animals seem much more affected by the changing season than people.

He said nature gives plenty of clues as to how severe the coming winter might be.

"There's all kinds of them, including the activity of squirrels, the amount of acorn drops, frequent halos around the moon, bigger spider webs — those are the kind of things people generally are looking for," Geiger said. "It's fun to kind of look at what's gonna come up, and, in the old days, that's how they knew what was gonna happen."

Among other weather-predicting legends: When rabbits are fat in October and November,  or when pigs gather leaves and straw, expect a long winter. Some people also look to the "woolly bear" caterpillar as a prognosticator. A wide  brown stripe in the caterpillar's middle supposedly means a mild winter.

The Almanac says the days will be shorter and shorter until winter arrives at 6:03 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 21 — the shortest day of the year. After that, the days start to get longer.

Know what to expect as you head out each day this fall. Keep it tuned to WWJ Newsradio 950 for the latest forecast during traffic and weather, every 10 minutes on the 8s. Check this week's forecast and see live, local radar now at this link.

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