forecast

‘Season of Shivers': We're in for a Cold Winter, Old Farmer's Almanac Says

For eastern and central Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, it gets worse: there's expected to be more snow in store than usual, too

Mark-Garfinkel-Snow-Massachusetts
Mark Garfinkel

Enjoy the sun while it's still shining, because this winter may be very cold, at least according to a new forecast from the Old Farmer's Almanac.

The latest edition of the 230-year-old reference guide predicts an extra-cold winter for the United States this winter, the almanac announced this week in a news release titled, "Season of Shivers!"

For eastern and central Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, it gets worse: there's expected to be more snow in store than usual, too.

"This coming winter could well be one of the longest and coldest that we've seen in years," the almanac's editor, Janice Stillman, said in a statement.

Not everyone puts stock in the Old Farmer's Almanac's predictions, which date back to its founding in the late 1700s and were initially based on sunspots, though now incorporate meteoroloy and climatology.

Last year's winter forecast was 72% accurate when it came to predicting the change in temperature and 78% accurate at foreseeing the change in temperature, the almanac said in August. https://www.almanac.com/how-accurate-old-farmers-almanacs-weather-forecast

But the 2020-21 forecast for the Northeast was a miss for temperature and precipitation -- it snowed more than the previous year only between Philadelphia and Connecticut.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games closed on Sunday, officially beginning the countdown to the 2022 Beijing Olympics. With less than six months before the next games begin, the Winter Olympics are set to start on Feb. 4, 2022.
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