Is New England on the cusp of a snowy winter?

The Farmer' Almanac suggests it will be a good winter for tree skiing at Cannon. (Greg Keeler/Cannon Mountain)

We don’t normally pay much attention to the Farmer’s Almanac’s annual winter outlook, if only because skiers rarely want to hear it’s going to be “milder than normal” in their region of the country months before the season even starts. 

But when the news is more promising, we quickly morph into almanac advocates. 

The Farmer’s Almanac released its extended winter weather forecast earlier this month and “suggests a stormy winter on schedule, especially for the eastern half of the country. For some areas this may mean snow, but for others it will result in more slush and mush.” 

That means “significant shivers and slushy, icy, snowy conditions” for the Northeast. 

Last summer, the almanac’s prediction for the winter of 2021-22 said, “there will be snow, but probably not as much as snow-sport enthusiasts might dream of.” Which was a forecast that was pretty accurate in a snow-starved season for much of New England. 

Not that’s it a reason to go find your skis and do an immediate wax job, but to hear the prediction make a turn this year is at least a little promise until the lifts start running a little more (or less?) than two months from now. 

The formula for the Farmer’s Almanac, which has been published since 1818, “takes into consideration things like sunspot activity, tidal action of the Moon, the position of the planets, and a variety of other factors.” 

Almanac authors claim they can forecast the weather with up to 80 percent accuracy. A University of Illinois study disagreed, saying the almanac was only 52 percent accurate—which is essentially a roll of the dice.

But if they’re calling for a snowy winter, we’ll take those odds.