Photo by Chris Militzer/Miliman12 Photography
Alexandria City Hall in the snow.
The Farmer's Almanac is out with its winter outlook, and it's going to be a "polar coaster."
"Are you ready for another winter ride, full of chills and thrills?! According to the 2020 Farmers' Almanac, this winter will be filled with so many ups and downs on the thermometer, it may remind you of a 'Polar Coaster,'" the Farmers' Almanac website predicts for the 2019-2020 winter.
For the Washington, DC metro area, the Farmers' Almanac is calling for "frosty, wet and white" conditions this winter. The Northeast corridor from Washington to Boston will see colder-than-normal temperatures for much of the winter, with the coldest period coming in late January into early February.
The Almanac also predicts "above-normal winter precipitation over the eastern third of the country. ... The outlook forewarns of not only a good amount of snow, but also a wintry mix of rain, sleet—especially along the coast."
The Farmers' Almanac started making long-term forecasts in the 1800s based largely on sun spot activity. The Farmers' Almanac founder, Robert B. Thomas, "believed that weather on Earth was influenced by sunspots, which are magnetic storms on the surface of the Sun. Notes about his formula are locked in a black box in our offices in Dublin, New Hampshire."
Since the formula was created, the methodology has been refined somewhat, and today the Farmer's Almanac looks at historic weather data compared to historic solar patterns, and compares those to current solar activity.
