A good old-fashioned Saskatchewan winter. That is the prediction for the year from the Old Farmer’s Almanac.
“We’re looking for really cold spells to start in the middle of November, and then also to be especially cold at the end of December into the beginning of January, and then from the end of January all the way through the middle of February,” explained Jack Burnett, the managing editor of the almanac.
In addition to the cold snaps, there will be our fair share of snowfalls as well. The almanac is calling for three stretches where we will see significant snowfall.
“The three periods of most heavy-duty snow to actually begin – in early November, there’s one, and then the second is the first week or ten days of so of February and then the last is the last week of March,” Burnett said. He also pointed out that the forecast from the almanac is calling for a couple of significant snow events.
“We’re looking for, in your area in particular, we’re looking for a snowstorm right around November 8th, 9th, 10th – something like that. And then we’re also looking for another snowstorm the first week of April, so that's about as far apart as you can get for snow. It’s going to be an old-fashioned winter.”
The projections for the winter from the Old Farmer's Almanac, though, don’t necessarily jive with the models from Environment and Climate Change Canada. With El Nino developing in the Pacific Ocean, the forecast from Environment Canada is calling for above-average temperatures for the next three months and below-average precipitation. Burnett, though, does stand by the accuracy of the almanac’s meteorologists.
“We usually are about 80 percent,” Burnett noted. “Get it right about four out of five times. That being said, I would say, starting maybe six or seven years ago, we started to be lower than that, like around 70 percent. So, our meteorologist did a three or four-year test of how we could tweak our ancient formulas, which have long since been computerized, to take into account climate change. So, they were able to figure it out, and so we tweaked things a little bit and we’re back up around 80 percent in most cases now.”
Wed, May 15, 9:00 AM
