One year after Hurricane Helene, Banner Elk's beloved Woolly Worm Festival returns-raising money for local kids with worm races, winter folklore, and small-town grit.
00:00I can vividly remember the Tuesday before it hit, my garage flooded, which was so rare.
00:08Last September, this part of the North Carolina high country was hit hard from Hurricane Helene.
00:14The full infrastructure was annihilated. All of us were broken.
00:18The popular Woolly Worm Festival, with its cult-like following, had to be canceled.
00:23It wasn't on the radar whatsoever that the festival would be affected by it.
00:28Thirteen months later, Victoria Bauman is about to throw the biggest party of her career.
00:34We got Carolina Wireless trying to fix our Wi-Fi down here as we speak.
00:39No one has shied away of the call of duty of the worm.
00:43Move over, Puxatawney Phil. There's a lot on the line.
00:47The last worm standing, dubbed the fast and the furriest, wins $1,000 and becomes the official winter forecaster for the Appalachian High country.
00:56You absolutely love it and you embrace it. You drink the Kool-Aid.
01:00The return of the Woolly Worm Festival symbolizes hope and resilience, all wrapped up in hundreds of fuzzy forecasters who wiggle skyward in front of 20,000 worm watchers and coaches.
01:12The darker the segment, the colder, the snowier, the icier it is.
01:18It's close to 90% accuracy rate.
01:21After the checkered flag, the worms are released back into the wild, soon flying high as tiger moths in the Carolina sun.
01:28I get really emotional because it's, it's quirky, it's silly.
01:32I think when you're little, everything seems possible and let's have a worm tell us the weather.
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