Brutal Winter? Almanac Could Be Wrong, NOAA Says

The 2015 edition of the Farmers' Almanac hit shelves Aug. 25, and its contents aren't heartwarming for the winter-weary. This winter will see "below-normal temperatures for about three-quarters of the nation," the Almanac reads. The new winter outlook also predicts that the Northern Plains and the Great Lakes regions of the U.S. will be hardest hit.

But the predictions included in the Farmers' Almanac are just that: predictions. And these forecasts could be wrong, according to Anthony Artusa, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

While NOAA's official three-month outlook for the coming winter months isn't due out until around mid-October, Artusa said that meteorologists are not seeing the climate conditions that would indicate what the Almanac refers to as a "record breaking winter."

"We don't see anything offhand that would suggest it would be a really brutal winter," Artusa told Live Science.

The Almanac's forecast implies that certain complex weather conditions are expected in the coming months, something that Artusa said he has seen no evidence of in recent weeks.

[link to news.discovery.com]

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