Farmers' Almanac predicts ‘wild weather' in winter outlook. Is it accurate, though?
That doesn't necessarily mean any of it is going to happen, though.
Among the 'wild' weather events forecasted for winter, the Farmers' Almanac predicts 'consistent cold snaps' from the Pacific Northwest to New England; frequent or periodic snowstorms in the Pacific Northwest, the Great Lakes, the Northeast and even the Mid-Atlantic; and wetter-then average weather in the southern half of the country, with cold, sometimes freezing precipitation in and around Texas.
In its press release, issued Monday, the Farmers' Almanac summed up the 2025-2026 winter season for much of the U.S. in three words: 'Chill, Snow, Repeat.'
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Other predictions include blasts of very frigid weather 'from the Northern Plains to northern New England' in January and February, and possible snowstorms in North Carolina and Tennessee as late as late February/early March, Sandi Duncan, the editor of the Farmers' Almanac, told Nexstar.
Bouts of snow may also be in the cards for northern Texas in December and February, according to the almanac.
'We don't think the cold and snow that some southern areas saw last year will repeat, but we do see some wild swings in the temperatures that will keep our winter [on] the 'Snow, Chill, Repeat' loop and may surprise some folks with wet snow that shows up instead of rain,' Duncan said.
How accurate is the Farmers' Almanac?
The Farmers' Almanac, established in 1818, develops its forecasts using a somewhat secret formula involving celestial bodies and past weather patterns. But like the Old Farmer's Almanac (a separate publication), it hasn't always been the most accurate predictor of upcoming weather events, according to researchers. A study conducted by John E. Walsh and David Allen, published in the 1981 edition of Weatherwise, showed that only 50.7% of both almanacs' historical temperature forecasts and 51.9% of their precipitation forecasts panned out correctly.
'It's more like a crapshoot of trusting something that far into the future since there are times the forecast is blown in the first 24 hours,' Rich Segal, meteorologist at Nexstar's KXAN, previously explained.
Jon Gottschalck, the chief of the Operational Prediction Branch at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, had also told Nexstar that forecasts which claim to predict specific weather events months ahead of time cannot be considered reliable.
'It's just not possible to do that,' Gottshalck said.
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The NOAA's Climate Prediction Center does, meanwhile, share its own long-range seasonal outlooks (e.g., forecasts for the chances of above or below-average temperatures, precipitation), although those outlooks do not attempt to predict specific weather events.
The editors of the Farmers' Almanac, still, touted the accurate aspects of its previous winter outlook (2024-2025) in a blog post published in July. But they blamed 'La Niña' for the absence of a 'cold spell' at the end of January 2025, and less wet weather than they had originally predicted.
'While no forecast can claim perfect accuracy, our predictions have proven useful for generations of planners and outdoor enthusiasts,' Duncan said. 'We continuously refine our method but acknowledge that Mother Nature always has the final say.'
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