Warmer than Normal
Butler County residents won't have to invest in new snow blowers this December. At least that's the forecast from the Old Farmer's Almanac 2017 which is predicting a warmer-than-normal winter for the area.
Senior Editor Mare-Anne Jarvela of the almanac, based in Dublin, N.H., said the 225-year-old publication's team of forecasters predict December's average temperature is going to be about 8 degrees higher than normal.
“The coldest period will be in early to mid-January and also early February,” said Jarvela.
“It looks like rain to snow showers on Christmas. It's going to be a pretty warm Christmas,” she added. “You may get a little snow on Thanksgiving, and then New Year's is going to be colder.”
“Christmas is going to be pretty mild, then its going to get colder at the end of December,” she added.
Going further into the future, Jarvela said the almanac predicts April and May temperatures will also be warmer than normal, while summer will be cooler and slightly drier than normal.
The almanac claims an 80 percent success rate.
Jarvela said the almanac's forecasters use a variety of means to chart future weather.
“We say it takes about a year to make the forecasts. We start on the next one once the almanac is printed. We are working on 2018 now.”
Jarvela said, “We have a meteorologist that helps us out and gives us access to weather data and expertise in long-range forecasting, and then we work on it in the editorial department. There are six of us. ”
Some of the calculations take into account the sunspot activity that almanac founder Robert Thomas believed influenced the weather.
“We still use a piece of the original formula from 1792,” Jarvela said.
“He believed in the effects of sunspot activity. Sunspots have a cycle, and he believed that sunspot activity affects the weather.”
“Sun spots have a cycle, usually an 11-year cycle. Usually it is colder when there are less sunspots,” said Jarvela. “Right now, it is in a low cycle, that means colder weather.”
“But there are other factors,” she added.
John Darnley, a meteorologist with the Pittsburgh office of the National Weather Service, said he's a fan of the almanac if not its methods for predicting the weather.
“I've been reading it all my life. It's a fine publication. There's articles on farming, sky watching.”
But Darnley said he leaves the long-range weather predictions to the Climate Prediction Center. The weather service only forecasts seven days out.
“I would say inside of three days we are very good,” he said.
Jarvela said the Old Farmer's Almanac has endured for 225 years because “I think it is the trust in the information in the almanac. It is something that readers remember their grandparents having on the coffee table. And growing up they still feel the tradition and it's something comforting.”“And it's amazing that people still want a print copy with all the digital options available,” said Jarvela.“We still sell as many copies (3.5 million) as we did 15 years ago. Readers still buy the book, that's good for advertisers,” she said.The almanac comes out in mid-August and in addition to the printed version it has a Facebook page, a website and a digital format that can be downloaded to tablets or computers.Jarvela, who started as fact checker at the almanac 24 years ago, said a 2018 Kids' Almanac is in the works as well as cookbooks, phone apps and wall calendars.The almanac has evolved since 1792 when Thomas, a Massachusetts farmer, printed 3,000 copies of an almanac containing his weather predictions for 1793.
