Farmer's Almanac Predicts 'Bitterly Cold' Winter

The famous Farmer’s Almanac is going to damper the mood of many man-made global warming alarmists when the book hits the shelves on Monday. They predict the 2013-2014 winter will be extremely cold.

The book uses words like “piercing cold,” “bitterly cold,” and “biting cold” to describe the upcoming winter. The authors predict a huge winter storm during the first outdoor Super Bowl in years. The Super Bowl is scheduled at MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands in New Jersey, and the almanac predicts a huge winter storm in the Northeast at that time.

The almanac also predicts two-thirds of the country will experience a colder than normal winter and heavy snowfall in the Midwest, Great Lakes, and New England. From the Associated Press:

“We’re using a very strong four-letter word to describe this winter, which is C-O-L-D. It’s going to be very cold,” said Sandi Duncan, managing editor.

The publication is 197 years old, and the prediction system is essentially unchanged since it was founded by David Young in 1818. The editors base it on planetary positions, sunspots, lunar cycles, and their own secret formula. Most scientists do not pay attention to the almanac, but it does have an admirable track record. Its authors say people who use the almanac to plan weddings and plant gardens are correct 80% of the time. From the AP:

Last year, the forecast called for cold weather for the eastern and central U.S. with milder temperatures west of the Great Lakes. It started just the opposite but ended up that way.

Caleb Weatherbee, the publication’s elusive prognosticator, said he was off by only a couple of days on two of the season’s biggest storms: a February blizzard that paralyzed the Northeast with 3 feet of snow in some places and a sloppy storm the day before spring’s arrival that buried parts of New England.

This past week, former politician Al Gore said climate change deniers are like racists, homophobes, alcoholics, and smokers. The United Nations will soon release a report that states global warming is real, but global temperatures have stabilized over the last 15 years. Last year, James Lovelock, the British scientist who pioneered the “Gaia theory” of the environment, walked back his global warming rhetoric.