Farmer’s Almanac nails winter freeze; government climate scientists way off
February 21, 2014 by Michael Dorstewitz 2 Comments
Photo credit: www.nbcphiladelphia.com
The bitterly cold winter the country is experiencing now took government climatologists completely by surprise, but was predicted with dead-center accuracy by the Old Farmer’s Almanac, a 200 year-plus publication.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center worked feverishly, plugging all available data into supercomputers to predict temperatures would be “above normal from November through January across much of the lower 48 states,” according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
It made its November through January prediction in October.
Instead of the mild winter the scientists predicted, we got hit with the polar vortex, plunging temperatures in in all 50 states to below-freezing temperatures and covering the Midwest and Northeast under more than a foot of snow.
And just to make sure we know it wasn’t an anomaly, Mother Nature said she’s sending another dose of polar vortex our way next week.
“Not one of our better forecasts,” acknowledged the Climate Prediction Center’s acting director Mike Halpert to Bloomberg.
But not everyone got it wrong.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac, which made its winter predictions way back during the summer, used terms like “bitter,” “biting” and piercing” to describe how cold it was going to be, according to CBS News — and it was spot on.
Shortly after making its prediction, Farmer’s Almanac editor Tim Clark explained on Washington, D.C. TV station WUSA9 that although the publication employs many of the same predictors used by the government, it throws the solar cycle into the mix. “And have [used it], for 220 years,” he added.
So climate is cyclical? Watch Clark’s explanation via WUSA9, then check out “‘I Am A Ukrainian’ video goes viral; brave young woman pleads for help.”
Sly, all they did was report the data the NOAA recorded.