Lewiston, Maine – Americans shouldn’t expect Mother Nature to help with their heating bills this winter because it’s going to be nippy, according to the venerable Farmers’ Almanac.
After one of the warmest winters ever, this winter will be much colder than normal, the almanac predicts.
“Shivery is not dead!” declared editor Peter Geiger as the latest edition of the 190-year-old publication hits the newsstands.
The almanac, which claims its forecasts are accurate 80 percent to 85 percent of the time, correctly predicted a “polar coaster” of dramatic swings for last winter, Geiger said. For example, New York City collected 40 inches of snow even though it was one of the warmest winters in the city’s history.
This year, predicts the almanac’s forecaster, Caleb Weatherbee, it’ll be especially snowy across the mountains of the Southwest, much of the Pacific Northwest, the nation’s midsection and parts of eastern New England.
And it will be frigid from the Gulf Coast all the way up the East Coast.
But it’ll be especially nippy on the northern Plains – up to 20 degrees below seasonal norms in much of Montana, the Dakotas and part of Wyoming, he writes.
“Because of energy costs, nobody wants to hear that it’s going to be cold,” Geiger said.
On the other hand, “for those who enjoy the outdoors, it’s going to be good news,” he said.
Weatherbee makes his forecasts two years in advance using a secret formula based on sunspots, the position of the planets and the tidal action of the moon.
Ken Reeves, director of forecasting operations for Accuweather Inc., said the almanac’s “concept or technique is different from what is done by the scientific meteorological community, but that doesn’t mean it’s without any merit.”
The Farmers’ Almanac differs from the New Hampshire-based Old Farmer’s Almanac.
