Woollybear Festival

The Woollybear Festival is held every Fall in downtown Vermilion, Ohio, on Lake Erie.

The festival is held every year around October 1 on a Sunday on which the Cleveland Browns either have an away game or are not playing.

[2][3] The festival is the brainchild of the late Dick Goddard, the former long-time weatherman at Cleveland's WJW-TV.

[4] The Woolly Bear Caterpillar is similarly celebrated for its mythical association to winter forecasting.

Attracting 2,000 spectators in the first year, the number grew to an estimated 15,000 by the eighth festival and quickly overwhelmed the town of Birmingham.

Former Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and his wife Elizabeth, at the Woollybear Festival parade in 2008