Farmer’s Almanac predicting a white winter As Texas gets at least a temporary reprieve this week from the heat, with a nice round of rain blanketing much of the state, the Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting January will bring significant snowfall to the state. The periodical, founded in 1818, develops its extended forecast “using a 204-year-old mathematical formula focused on sunspot activity, planet positions and tidal actions of the moon.” The almanac’s website claims its forecasts are 80% to 85% accurate. Since the secret formula was first developed by David Young, an astronomer and mathematician who was the almanac’s first editor, only seven people have been hired to develop the weather predictions.
A meteorologist for the National Weather Service interviewed by the Austin American- Statesman casts a skeptical eye on the almanac’s methods and predictions.
“There is little to no scientific evidence that sunspot activity and the position of plan- ets have any impact on our weather and our climate,” Keith White said. “A lot of the statements they use in terms of what they expect over the course of a season are very broad and can be applied kind of subjectively by people.”
