KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — It's that time of year again! The Old Farmer's Almanac has released its winter 2019-20 weather predictions and it's looking pretty wild for much of the country.
The almanac is calling it a "polar coaster" winter. Its experts predict a lot of "ups and downs" on the thermometer.
It predicts the chilliest temperatures in the Northeast, frigid and snowy weather for the Midwest, a big snowstorm in the Great Plains... and a wet winter here in East Tennessee.
For our area, the almanac also predicts a warmer-than-average winter with the coldest temperatures arriving in early December, late January and early February.
It also predicted our best chances for snow are in mid to late-November and in early January.
The track record for the almanac has been pretty good.
The almanac said it uses solar science, climatology and meteorology to predict trends and events in the weather by comparing solar patterns and historical weather conditions.
While the Old Farmer's Almanac is a go-to standard for these sorts of predictions, they aren't always on the nose (it claims it's traditionally been about 80 percent accurate).
So if you were sorely hoping for a lot of snow this winter, don't lose hope yet! You could always turn to obscure folklore for your winter predictions!
For example, the Hiwassee/Ocoee State Park will engage in the fine art of using persimmon seeds to predict the coming winter, and on the third week of October the town of Banner Elk, N.C. will have a bunch of woolly worms race each other for the honor of predicting winter.
If you don't trust the validity of persimmons or racing caterpillars, you could also just wait a couple of months for Todd Howell to look at all the climate conditions that will be in play to deliver a forecast backed up by decades of data and meteorology. He was pretty much spot-on with his winter outlook last year.
