What winter in Sask. and rest of prairies could look like this year

The start of September marked meteorological fall and Sept. 22 at 6:43 a.m. will mark the 2024 fall equinox. That has winter on the minds of many even though hot weather is still in the forecast.

With close to an 80 per cent accuracy rating, the Old Farmer’s Almanac is something many people turn to for a long-range forecast to get an idea of what winter might bring.

Editor Carol Connare said to land on their weather predictions, they rely on something she called sun science.

“Our founder Robert B Thomas was an astronomer and for many years keeping track of magnetic storms on the sun, they’re 11-year cycles and we just entered cycle 26,” she said.

Connare says that means their weather predictions are based on data over all of those cycles.

“And we see what is similar, maybe a year eight with a certain week. What are the patterns and so that’s what we do, we crunch those numbers and then we make our predictions based on that.”

The 2025 edition of the book is predicting that winter for many in Saskatchewan will be one of the snowiest and coldest on average.

“Also, into the spring it’s like a whole lot of precipitation going on through the spring and into the summer [of 2025] but definitely this winter, it’s [Saskatchewan] one of the few places in North America where we’re calling for consistent snow cover,” Connare said.

She also said they are predicting spring to be cooler and wetter than normal for Saskatchewan.

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Aside from weather predictions, Connare says the Old Farmer’s Almanac also contains information on things such as gardening by the moon, folklore on tides and how to do a backyard flock.

“This year we have stories on a bunch of cows that have made great comebacks, species in Canada including one from Saskatchewan and then we have the Canadian origins on baseball as well as lots of planting and sky watching tips and techniques,” Connare said.

For now, Regina and other parts of Saskatchewan are expecting daytime temperatures to be in the 30s over the weekend, according to some weather models.