I have no idea why, but each year around this time I check through all the various forecasts for the coming winter.
Forecasting the weather is not a job I would really want. It’s not easy. There is a lot of truth to the saying we use around here that if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes. Because our weather does like to change. Predicting the weather more than a day or two in advance is pretty difficult. A month or two ahead, forget about it.
But each year, I read through the various almanacs and check out the winter weather forecasts and ask the birds and measure the stripes on caterpillars and see how high the wasp nests are and check to see which knee hurts the worst and a number of different weather indicators. None of them work very well, but it’s fun to try.
There seems to be some agreement this year. Most everyone seems to be saying the temperatures will be slightly warmer than normal and precipitation could be about normal or slightly above. Although the temperature thing is sort of an average, and a couple predictions mention the temperatures will be like a yo-yo, up and down.
Since there is no explanation of how these two could work together, it’s hard to get anything from this. If we get some of that precipitation on days when the temperature is down, it will likely be snow. If we get it during one of the up periods, it will likely be rain. Or around here, slush. Slush seems to make up a lot of our winter precipitation lately, anyway.
So the actual forecasts seem to indicate it could be a mild winter.
But there are a lot of apples and various berries this year. Usually that would be an indicator of a snowy winter.
I haven’t seen any wasps nests, so I have no idea if they were building high or low this year. Although if you don’t see them, it could indicate they are building low which would indicate a mild winter.
And the one caterpillar I came across was totally black. No stripe at all. Going by that, we should be under about three feet of snow already. I hope it got eaten by a bird.
So as usual, after carefully weighing all the evidence and checking all available information, I have no idea what the winter will bring. I’ll just keep the storm chips and hot chocolate handy… just in case.
