Fairbanks, AK - The latest edition of the Old Farmer’s Almanac hit newsstands across the nation this week. There are two versions of the Farmer’s Almanac that come out each year. Much like its newer counterpart, the Old one predicts a cold a snowy winter. But that isn’t abnormal for Alaska.
It’s that time of year when a change in season has us all wondering what kind of winter we’re facing. It’s a question Rick Thoman is familiar with. “Yes, that’s always a question," he smiles. "What will be the upcoming season? When it was cold and snowy in the spring it was ‘would summer ever get here?’ and yes it did and now it’s ‘what will winter be like?’”
Thoman is known as the “climate guy” for the National Weather Service’s Alaska Region. He has a standard response. "For winters, yes, it will be getting darker until late December and then we look for increasing light and kind of the opposite in summer." But that's not really climate, he admits. "No, that’s astronomy, but that’s more predictable, so it’s a good retort.”
Thoman creates long-term forecasts for the region. To do that, he looks at sea surface temperatures and atmospheric data. “Things that have long staying power," he explains. "Because it’s water, temperatures change slowly over the oceans and how those play out will then influence the storm track. So those are the kind of things we’re looking at: where we are at late in the summer and early fall and how that will influence the overall pattern.”
Thoman raises his eyebrows when asked about the Farmer’s Almanac. Both old and new versions of the Almanacs rely on planetary positions, lunar cycles and solar activity to create their forecasts. They predict “Days of Shivery” in our future, with the coldest temperatures in the north between December and February. “So, to say that the coldest part of the winter will be December into January? That’s normal,” he says. Both Almanacs also predict above normal snowfall into early May. “Snow is fairly unusual in May. Of course we just went through the coldest spring since 1924, so we’re unlikely to have a repeat of that just one year later,” says Thoman.
The Farmer’s Almanacs claim 80 percent accuracy, so Thoman compared last year’s Almanac predictions with actual National Weather Service data from across the nation. “It called for wet and chilly in the southeast and colder than normal with mixed snow sleet and rain in the mid-Atlantic states and then cold and snowy in the Great Lakes in New York and New England and just looking at those regions," he says, "we see that in fact east of the Mississippi, most places were significantly warmer than normal through the December through February period and Florida, New Jersey and Vermont had amongst the warmest winters on record in the last 118 years.”
In the end, Thoman says it’s probably going to get colder, especially in the Interior. “It’s interior Alaska, very likely to be a cold snap or two. It would be quite amazing if there wasn’t.” But he says the Farmer’s Almanac – old or new – may not be the best source of information for long term weather forecasts. “For gardening tips, it’s great!” But it’s going to be a while before we start thinking of seed starts and vegetable gardens again.