Take it for what it's worth, but The Farmers' Almanac is predicting a cold and snowy winter for Minnesota and much of the North Central United States.
To be exact, the outlook gives Minnesota and the North Central U.S. a winter title of "Numb's the Word, Just Shovelin' Along."
"The central portion of the country will be cold, with many below normal winter temperatures," a video on the almanac's website forewarns. "These cold temperatures will start out slowly, though. January is forecast to start out mild for most of the country, but then trend towards colder conditions during the middle to latter part of the month.
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Oh, and don't make plans for Jan. 20-23 because "a blizzard could also make travel conditions difficult for the North Central states," the almanac says.
February will be a "quieter month" for most of the country, while "March will be the manifestation of the flip-flop winter with plenty fo stretches of uneventful weather and large doses of stormy precipitation."
The Farmers' Almanac's rival, the Old Farmer's Almanac, has yet to unveil its winter 2021-22 prediction. That should be coming out any day now. But NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC), as usual, has some projections that should also be taken with a grain of salt.
It comes after a year of unusually severe, climate change-affected weather events – including record-breaking heat on the West Coast during the summer – that has caught even climatologists and meteorologists by surprise.
Per the CPC, November-January has equal chances of below normal or above normal temperatures and precipitation for Minnesota. And the same goes for December-February, though the long-range outlooks does suggest a slight chance of above normal precipitation January-March.
The Twin Cities averages 54 inches of snow each winter, though the past two winters have had below normal snowfall. A total of 48.7 inches fell in the Twin Cities last winter, but just 7.8 inches in January, 5.9 inches in February and 4 inches in March.
The winters of 2017-18 and 2018-19 were much snowier, with a more than 77 inches piling up both winters. The winter of 2018-19 saw a monthly record of 39 inches fall in February, while the 2017-18 winter was capped off with a monster snowstorm that fueled 26 inches of snow in April.
While winter remains months in the future, the Farmers' Almanac is also calling for "violent thunderstorms" Sept. 16-19 for the North Central U.S., so we'll see how accurate their predictions are less than a month from now.
