At the top of the tree in the middle of this photo–the tree that has lost all its leaves–you can see a ball of leaves. That’s a squirrels nest. Folklore says that the higher up in a tree that the squirrels build their nests, the colder the winter will be.
So someone forgot to tell every forecaster that exists about this little bit of lore. All of the major weather services, from NOAA to the commercial types like AccuWeather and the Weather Channel are predicting warm winters for us.
The 2 Almanacs are predicting bitter cold. Maybe they consulted the squirrels.
But time will tell, of course. And in the long run, it matters far more to the squirrels than it does to us humans who can hunker down in our homes and don’t have to live in trees!
Gardendaze 
Some of the dogs predict the weather by their fuzzy undercoat. However, Rhody does not get fuzzier until the weather starts to get cool. Horses do not seem to change, but others get fuzzier too
Yes, this is true for dogs–& even cats, for the short time that I had them. I am not sure when we got away from listening to some of the signs in nature. Most likely when all of our TV stations started telling us that they were the “number 1 most accurate forecast by weather rate”– whatever the heck that means!
Karla