Almanac Weather Predictions vs Modern Science

A Colonial Reference Book That Learned to Talk About Weather

The almanac began its life as something closer to a farmer’s toolkit than a crystal ball. In colonial America, these small reference volumes told growers when to plant and sailors where the moon would sit for navigation. Benjamin Franklin published one of the earliest examples, Poor Richard’s Almanack, for roughly a quarter century starting in 1732. [1] That edition carried astrological signs, the year’s planetary motions, month-by-month weather guesses, eclipse predictions and court dates. Franklin himself conceded the limits of the exercise, joking that no one expects a forecaster to nail the exact day of the month — a few days of slack should be granted, and any remaining error could be blamed on the printer.

What survives from that tradition is a hybrid document. An almanac is a reference book covering many subjects at once: weather outlooks, sunrise and sunset times, important dates, moon phases, tide tables and future eclipses. Two titles dominate the market. The Old Farmer’s Almanac has published since 1792, making it older than the U.S. Patent Office. The Farmers’ Almanac arrived in 1818 and continues to publish its annual edition. Both have spent generations promising long-range weather predictions they describe as highly accurate — a claim that atmospheric scientists have disputed for just as long.

The mechanics behind those predictions are not fully disclosed. Neither publication releases its full formula. The Old Farmer’s Almanac says it blends solar science, which studies sunspots, with climatology, which examines weather patterns, and meteorology, which focuses on the atmosphere. It claims to feed the same principles through modern satellite data and current equipment. The Farmers’ Almanac lists sunspot cycles, solar activity, tidal forces, the reversal of winds in the stratosphere over the equator, the Moon’s tidal pull and the position of the planets. It builds its forecasts two years ahead of publication and does not revise them once an edition goes to print.

The appeal is not hard to locate. Heidi Stonehill, executive editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, frames the mission as shared with mainstream forecasters: both long-range outlooks and short-term forecasts aim to help people and communities stay safe, stay productive and enjoy life. [1] Weather touches everyone, she notes, so people want to know what is coming — whether to prepare for storms, plan a trip around sunshine or give garden plants extra care during a hot, cold or dry stretch. Peter Goble, assistant state climatologist at the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University, offers a blunter read on the same appeal. [1] The Farmers’ Almanac, he says, delivers dramatic winter language for the northern half of the country — “bone-chilling cold,” “teeth-chattering cold” — and that language grabs people even when it does not make for good science.

The Two-Week Wall That Seasonal Forecasts Cannot Climb

Routine weather forecasts hold up for roughly two weeks. Beyond that window, forecasters switch tools. They run advanced computer models that swallow enormous volumes of data and estimate the probability of temperatures landing outside the normal range. They study the slower-moving pieces of the climate system and how those pieces tend to push weather around. The approach is probabilistic by design, not declarative.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been explicit about that ceiling. In a May 2023 post on climate.gov, Rebecca Lindsey of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote that forecasters will never be able to say a month in advance that there is a 100% chance of a wetter-than-average May. The climate, the post concluded, is not that predictable. That ceiling reflects the nature of the system being modeled, not a failure of effort or funding.

Almanac Weather Predictions vs Modern Science (Image 1)

Into that gap step the almanacs, with a different kind of confidence. The Old Farmer’s Almanac claims about 80% accuracy on its website, while conceding that no forecaster has gained sufficient insight into the atmosphere to predict weather with total accuracy. Stonehill explains how the number is built: the publication compares actual temperature and precipitation records for a city inside a forecast region against the direction that was forecast — above or below normal. For the U.S. long-range 2025/26 winter forecast, she reports an accuracy rate of 83.3% for temperature, 15 of 18 regions correct, and 94.4% for precipitation, 17 of 18 regions correct, for a combined 88.9%.

Corey Davis, assistant state climatologist at the North Carolina State Climate Office, explains what that 80% figure actually measures. When people hear the number, they assume it means the almanac is right 80% of the time about when cold and wet periods will arrive. In practice, Davis says, the claim is closer to predicting the overall tendency of the weather. The distinction matters because a tendency is a much easier target to hit than a timing call.

J. Marshall Shepherd, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Georgia, has long rejected the almanacs as legitimate weather sources. He points out that scientific weather forecasting and short-term seasonal prediction have advanced significantly, and that models, observational systems and the knowledge base have made short-term prediction, hurricane tracking and El Nino forecasts quite reliable. Yet people still turn to groundhogs, almanacs and folklore. His sharper criticism targets the vagueness of the product itself. A call for a “cold and snowy winter” in New England or Minnesota, he notes, describes statistically normal conditions and is not a scientific breakthrough.

Goble tested that vagueness directly. He took the Farmers’ Almanac predictions for winters from the 2019-20 season through 2023-24 and set them against seasonal outlooks from the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center. He pulled every testable claim he could from the almanac and compared each one with what the Climate Prediction Center said for that region. The Climate Prediction Center did significantly better overall. Both sides missed sometimes, Goble adds, because seasonal forecasting is hard and much remains unknown. He also illustrates the language problem with the Farmers’ Almanac outlook for the north-central region — cold, snowy at times, breezy. A resident of South Dakota inside the same forecast zone could argue that a much warmer than normal winter still qualifies as cold, snowy at times and breezy. Vague language, he says, makes such claims difficult to test.

What the Almanacs Got Right, and What Comes Next

Not every page in the yellow book is contested. Davis notes that moon phases, sunset and sunrise times, future eclipses and high or low tide schedules are known with a high degree of scientific certainty and can generally be trusted when printed in an almanac. Those are astronomical calculations, not atmospheric guesses, and they sit on firm ground. The weather section is where the ground shifts.

The undisclosed formula bothers Goble on principle. A forecaster making decisions based on unpublished methods, he says, does not meet the standard of transparent science. The objection is structural rather than personal, and it points to a larger question: whether any long-range forecast built on a hidden formula can be tested, replicated or improved by the wider atmospheric science community.

Sources

Almanac Weather Predictions vs Modern Science (Image 2)

MSN — Portal copy — Original: USA TODAY

Almanac Weather Predictions vs Modern Science