Don’t like the weather in Alberta? Wait.Even as the first dump of snow gets set to hit the Rockies this week, the Farmer’s Almanac is predicting what many have already guessed: winter is coming. Sooner than you think.And indeed, areas of the mountain parks were expected to get by as much as 30 CM of snow this week as a low pressure moves through Southern Alberta..But for most of Alberta — north of Red Deer — the Almanac predicts a mild and drier Yuletide than usual. But Calgary and environs can expect a cooler, wetter and snowier six months or so depending on such factors as ocean currents and sunspot activity.Meanwhile, Southern BC is expected to be colder and drier, while much of Saskatchewan and Manitoba all the way into Ontario can look forward to cold and snowy conditions.“Temperate is on tap for most of the country this winter, but let it snow in Ontario!” proclaims Carol Connare, the Almanac’s editor-in-chief. “A winter of big freezes and heavy snowfall will be centered in Ontario and eastern Manitoba, while most of the rest of the country will get some relief and reprieve from snow shovelling and super-cold temperatures.”.For nearly 225 years the Old Farmer’s Almanac has been making annual weather predictions to inform decisions on planting as well as reaping and sowing. Whereas in 1792 much of that ‘data’ was gleaned from anecdotal tales and folklore, these days the editors claim to factor in variables such as ocean currents, tides, El Niño and the frequency of geomagnetic storms — factors completely ignored by agencies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in calculating weather models extending a century or more.Although its exact methods are a closely guarded secret, the Farmer’s Almanac boasts an accuracy of about 80% for its forecasts. That compares to about 50% for the average modern 10-day forecast from the likes of Environment Canada.Even most media outlets like the Weather Channel and others express forecasts in terms of “probabilities” rather than making exact predictions..Still, skeptics say the Almanac’s prognostications, insisting they’re no better than chance.In 2017 meteorologist John Walsh, from the US government’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, conducted a study testing the accuracy of the Almanac’s monthly temperatures and precipitation forecasts by comparing them to the actual weather data over a 5-year period. He found that 51.9% of the monthly precipitation forecasts and 50.7% of the monthly temperature forecasts were accurate, concluding that the percentages are similar to the 50% success rate that could be expected by simply flipping a coin.“Overall, The Old Farmer’s Almanac is a very remarkable piece of US history and, beyond planting recommendations or weather forecasting, each addition does include a number of interesting, factual articles for gardeners and others. I’ll leave it up to you as to whether or not you plan your crops around it,” wrote horticulturalist Ryan Pankhau, author of the Garden Scoop blog in Champaign, IL.
