hey metmike,
you seem to be a very knowledgeable person on the topic of weather. i am curious.
do you ever go back and check on something like the old famers almanac. do they ever have any accuracy? i imagine a person can back check each year. what was the prediction for each year, and was it accurate, or way off?
i figure it is mostly meant for entertainment purposes.
Thanks bear!
You asked the right guy.........operational meteorologist for over 4 decades!
Although getting pretty old, not old enough to use the Farmers Almanac to get my weather.
When I started on tv in this rural community, the locals and Farmers swore by the Farmers Almanac.
Being a man of science and the latest technology and principles of meteorology as well as fresh out of college, I probably upset a few of them with my confronting the accuracy of the Almanac and some of the (what I thought were) crazy weather folklore beliefs.
One year I actually kept track and the Farmers Almanac got everything almost perfect............perfectly wrong!
So I thought that I knew everything and these local yocals were just science uneducated believing in old wives tales sort of things.
They insisted that wooly worm caterpillars and squirrels and other creatures during the year could predict the upcoming Winter by their color or fur and such silly things.
I insisted that they are just responding to the CURRENT weather and food, not predicting it. Today, I still believe that but I learned a few things from them too.
This rural reporter that we had, Hal Wolford had a show called "back roads" and it fit him perfectly. My first year that I moved here in September 1982, I didn't know anybody, so he invited me to his house for Thanksgiving.
The menu included, not a big turkey but the pheasant that he and his sons shot hunting earlier that day. I had to keep picking the buckshot out of it which is what I remember the most. But it was yummy!
Interesting experience for a boy that grew up in Detroit.
Anyway, back in those days there was no internet or way for the average Joe or Hal to get detailed weather information unless you watched people like me on tv.
Hal had this bad right knee that he insisted could predict the weather..........yeah sure Hal, I thought.
This was the early/mid 1980's.
Hal would come to me in the weather office and ask "is there some bad weather moving in because my knee is killing me"
I'll be danged but his knee would be right every time that I remember. For awhile, I was thinking that he had another weather source and was just messing with me because he was the ultimate prankster. I'll tell you the funniest thing that he did on the next page.
So I figured out that his knee didn't know what the weather was but it would always ail him whenever the barometer was falling fast(going from high pressure that causes clear skies/nice weather to low pressure that causes inclement weather).
After awhile, he convinced me completely and I had to start rethinking my college edumacated learning of the weather and reconciling it to the living world surrounding it that I was dumb about.
I was a subscriber to Scientific American for 2 decades, including that period and got my explanation for Hal's knee in the late 1980's.
An emergency room doctor that also was self trained in meteorology had noted a significant increase in people coming to the emergency room with physical problems, ahead of bad weather.... sort of like Hal's bad knee on steroids.
He actually kept a journal tracking, recording/documenting it all so it could be verified then analyzed. Which is what led to his article that I read.
What he claimed was that people aches and pains increased when the pressure was falling because high pressure, though we don't notice this acts like an ace bandage wrapped around an injury to support it and make it feel better.
When the pressure fell, it was like taking the bandage off and removing the support to the ailing area.
If I'd read that 5 years earlier, not knowing Hal, I would have just forgotten I ever read it a few months later. Instead, it was like this..... EUREKA!
I just learned something profound that contradicts what I thought that I knew and now have the scientific explanation for it that I needed to fully embrace it!
I was more interested in studying possible explanations for other things like that too.
One thing that has ALWAYS been extraordinarily intriguing is how so many creatures know to migrate thousands of miles to warmer locations before the Winter.
This is absolutely predicting the seasons(which are defined by changes in weather).
Butterflies, birds, turtles and so on are born with this ability to know to fly south before the Winter.
Some creatures hibernate(since food disappears) plants go dormant to protect from the sub freezing temperatures.
But they do all that BEFORE all the killing cold hits. Amazing!
Anyway, we've since learned that migrating birds, for instance can "see" the magnetic field of the earth.
The strength of the magnetic field changes from north to south. It was theorized that they have an organ in their beaks that can actually detect it and this guides them on their journey like a compass.
But others speculate that it comes from something in their eyes.
We're still just discovering the real science behind it.
This is one of the most profoundly amazing things in all of nature!
So this is what Hal did one time that was really funny.
BTW, anytime he would see me, he would say "Mike Maguire, pants on fire!"
His oldest son was in the army for 4 years, then a member at the gym I went to and he told me that his dad was insane growing up. All day long he just did silly things to be funny and was constantly pulling pranks on all the kids.
This in one of them:
He did a segment called "Back Roads" where he would go out in the country and cover some person or family that was extremely unique. People would call or mail in suggestions or volunteer to have him come out to cover their event or situation.
He did hundreds of segments and they were fascinating.
On this particular day, he was covering some guy that fished the Ohio River to catch monster sized cat fish.He had the same photographer, Leonard Judd with him every time.
During the story, the guy caught a 5 foot catfish and gave it to Hal afterwards.
I'm sure Hal ended up eating it but before bringing it home, he decided to have some fun.
We had something like 50 people working at the tv station building, many were in sales and other departments. There was 1 mens and 1 womens rest room and the ladies up front took their lunch break at a certain time and were most likely to use the restroom then.
The ladies room had 2 stalls. So Hal went under one of the stalls and locked it from the inside, then crawled out so that every woman coming in had only 1 stall choice, the unlocked one.
Inside that toilet, he put the 5 foot catfish, with the tail in the toilet bowl and body propped up so the head was right there., almost in the face of anybody who opened the shut but unlocked door.
Then, he had his photographer waiting inconspicuously down the hall observing any traffic that went in.
As soon a lady went in, Leonard would run down to just in front of the door with his camera on to get them screaming and running out the door.
I thought he caught more than 1 but just remember it happening that way.
With it recorded, then they shared it with everybody in the newsroom........lots of times.
We used to have a bloopers Christmas party tape every year and that was probably a highlight that year.
From this link above:
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/89890/
Thanks much Jean!
Maybe in recent years The Farmers Almanac is using some technology that they didn't decades ago when they had such poor skill?
Their Winter 2022/23 forecast actually makes sense based on the La Nina.
From what I remember, the Farmers Almanac seemed to miss the most from being too cold and snowy more than any other types of weather.
Here it is again:
by Farmers' Almanac Staff Updated: August 1, 2022
https://www.farmersalmanac.com/farmers-almanac-releases-an-extreme-winter-forecast-for-2022-23
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_Almanac
Not to be confused with Old Farmer's Almanac.
For broader coverage of this topic, see American almanacs.
 Cover of the 2019 Farmers' Almanac | |
| Editor Managing Editor | Peter Geiger Sandi Duncan |
|---|---|
| Former editors | Ray Geiger William Jardine Berlin Hart Wright Samuel Hart Wright David Young |
| Categories | Almanacs |
| Frequency | Annually |
| Publisher | Almanac Publishing Company |
| First issue | 1818 |
| Company | Geiger |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | farmersalmanac |
| ISSN | 0737-6731 |
Farmers' Almanac is an annual American periodical that has been in continuous publication since 1818. Published by Geiger of Lewiston, Maine, the Farmers' Almanac provides long-range weather predictions for both the U.S. and Canada. The periodical also provides calendars and articles on topics such as full moon dates, folklore, natural remedies, and the best days to do various outdoor activities.
Each new year’s edition is released at the end of August of the previous year and contains 16 months of weather predictions broken into 7 zones for the continental U.S., as well as seasonal weather maps for the winter and summer ahead.
Publishers claim that "many longtime Almanac followers claim that their forecasts are 80% to 85% accurate" on their website. Their website also contains a list of the many more "famous" weather predictions they have accurately forewarned of and like to point out that they have been predicting the weather longer than the National Weather Service.
Most scientific analyses of the accuracy of Farmers' Almanac forecasts have shown a 50% rate of accuracy,[4][5] which is higher than that of groundhog prognostication, a folklore method of forecasting.[6] USA Today states that "according to numerous media analyses neither the Old Farmer's Almanac nor the Farmers' Almanac gets it right"
https://www.farmersalmanac.com/predicting-weather
Though weather forecasting, and long-range forecasting, in particular, remains an inexact science, many longtime Almanac followers maintain that our forecasts are 80% to 85% accurate. Check out our On the Money page to see some of the very accurate weather events predicted by the Farmers’ Almanac.
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I don't doubt that people who follow this publication make claims like that. I heard them all the time from the rural locals around these here parts.
But it ain't true. I just remembered that I actually got the Farmers Almanac almost every year in the 1980's and followed their forecasts pretty close for a couple of those years to see how close they were.
Throwing darts with a blind fold on might yield better accuracy (-:
At least in the 1980's.