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ABSTRACT
This review compares last year's
2017 Old Farmer's Almanac seasonal precipitation and temperature forecasts for the winter period of
November-March (NDJFM)
2016-2017 the observed temperature and
precipitation anomalies for the same periods.
DATA SOURCES
The Winter forecasts are reproduced from the 2017 Old Farmer's Almanac (Yankee
Publishing, Dublin, NH) website and the corresponding observed temperature and
precipitation data were downloaded from the
Climate Diagnostics Center
(CDC).
ANALYSIS
My subjective graphical grading is below.
Overall if a forecast was in the right category (i.e., above normal was
forecast and above normal was observed) I graded it as "good".
Conversely, if it was the wrong category (i.e., above normal was
forecast and below normal was observed then i graded it as "not good".
And if the forecast was off by a single category (i.e, above normal was
predicted and it was normal) or there was a mixture of above and below
in close proximity to one another then I graded it as "mixed".
Of the 34 precipitation regions compared, I
rated 7 (21%) regions as "good", 15 (44%) as "not good" and
12 (35%) as "mixed".
Of the 33 temperature regions compared, I rated 14 (42%) regions as
"good", 8 (24%) as "not good" and 11 (33%) as "mixed".
However, I leave it to
the individual reader to do their own comparison and evaluate the
relative usefulness of the forecasts.
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