NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — We love looking to animals to predict things. People look to Punxsutawney Phil for the end or winter, TikTok users have been looking to Noodle the pug to find out what kind of day they will have, and 2 On Your Side even read on Woolly Bear Caterpillar's winter "predictions."
The Aquarium at Niagara has their own animal offering prediction.
On Friday, Striker the harbor seal made his annual winter weather prediction.
Strike chases down two toys, one labeled "cold" and the other "fridged." Whichever one he chooses indicates what type of winter he predicts Western New York will get.
"We had Striker one of our five year old harbor seals, he actually predicted the winter and as you see he did pick the we're gonna have a frigid. So here in Western New York, our only two options are really cold or frigid. So apparently we're gonna have a frigid winter here," senior trainer Hallie Torre said.
And Stryker had some help from some Niagara Falls third graders.
Some on their first field trip ever, by the way, thanks to COVID. And he can teach them a lot about our world and the importance of how warm or how cold it is.
"These guys are gonna have to find find their fish no matter what so if they're living out in the ocean and it's a little bit too warm due to climate change, you know, there's gonna be a lot less fish out there for our for these animals to be able to get so all of this stuff is very important to educate our local kids about you know what they can do very simple things that they can do to impact their the environment," Torre said.
Now if you are not a fan of the cold, the good news here is that Stryker also predicted a frigid winter last year and it ended up being not that bad!
And this would be a good time to mention Storm team 2's Meteorologists will be releasing their winter weather outlook next week.
We'll see if they give Striker's forecast their seal of approval.