The Farmers Almanac has looked into the frosty future. Will NC get snow this winter?
The Farmers’ Almanac has delivered its winter forecast, and let’s just say, if it’s true that people in North Carolina don’t know how to drive in the snow, it won’t matter much this year.
That’s because most of the state won’t see snow this winter, according to the almanac’s forecast team.
The almanac has been making long-range weather predictions since 1818 using a secret formula that takes into account sunspot activity, planetary positioning, the moon’s effects on tides and other measurable phenomena. The publication’s editors claim an 80% to 85% overall accuracy rate.
As people who have spent hours of our Decembers, Januaries and Februaries staring out windows in hopes of seeing the least flurry falling to the ground, we hope they’re wrong this time.
Unfortunately, the National Weather Service sees much the same picture, taking into account a strengthening El Niño that’s expected to bring a cooler, wetter winter than average to North Carolina and the rest of the Southeast, but not necessarily snow.
When will winter hit in NC?
The first serious cold snap will hit the first week of October, the Farmers Almanac says in its forecast released Wednesday, sending frost into parts of the Southeast. Likewise the first week of November.
Between Nov. 16 and Nov. 19, the Tennessee Valley will get wet snow, the almanac says, but for everybody else: Showers. Then, at the end of November, there will be snow in North Carolina, but like tourists driving around in Winnebagos looking for changing leaves, it will stay in the mountains.
A white Christmas in NC?
In December, a couple of days before Christmas, the mountains will get snow again. The rest of North Carolina? Cold rain.
At the very end of December, the almanac foresees a storm coming up the East Coast that will bring precipitation. While the publication’s forecasters don’t say what kind of precipitation, winter-wonderlanders might be encouraged by the fact that some storms that have moved up the coast in the past have brought several inches of snow.
The first week of January is expected to bring snow again to the mountains and rain — again — to other parts of North Carolina.
We’re starting to feel like Charlie Brown at Halloween, when all the other kids get popcorn balls and candy and he always gets a rock.
A reason to hope
Finally, between Feb. 8 and Feb. 11, the almanac predicts cold temperatures and “scattered snow and rain showers,” but doesn’t predict which parts of the state will get what.
We’ll take that as a sign.
This story was originally published August 2, 2023 at 2:49 PM with the headline "The Farmers Almanac has looked into the frosty future. Will NC get snow this winter?."
