Washington state climatologist says Farmer's Almanac winter forecast is way off

The Old Farmer's Almanac has released its winter forecasts, saying Western Washington can expect more rain than normal, with warmer temperatures and less snow.

But State Climatologist Nick Bond told KUOW's Angela King the almanac’s forecasts for our region are about as good as flipping a coin. Or worse.

Angela King: So first off, what is the Farmer's Almanac saying and how accurate has it been?

Nick Bond: Well they claim that they're 80% accurate. I have serious doubts about that. I actually looked at their forecasts from some years ago -- 13 winters, their monthly precipitation totals, and average temperatures relative to normal for Western Washington and Western Oregon. And I was not convinced that they had much skill in their forecasts. In fact, the temperature forecasts were no better than flipping a coin, and precipitation forecasts were actually a little bit worse. So take a bucket of salt.

All right. So what are you seeing? What are the models telling you?

Yeah, so the Farmer's Almanac has is wetter than normal and warmer than normal. But what's really going on in the climate system is that the tropical Pacific is cooling off and it's likely we'll have weak to moderate La Nina conditions. And that tends to stack the deck for us to have actually a cooler than normal winter, especially after the first of the calendar year. Sometimes we're a little wet in kind of November and December in La Nina conditions, but not always. That's kind of problematic. It could go that way. But right now, I would say that the evidence is not necessarily far warmer than normal winter overall. And that is consistent with forecasts from the Climate Prediction Center of NOAA.

Well, rain this winter is not going to help Eastern Washington right now, which is still dealing with fires. The fire season though has been less active than some in recent years. Any concerns about wildfires this fall?

Oh, yeah, definitely. So the landscape has dried out. We've dodged a lot of bullets I would say. And the next few weeks look like some hot and dry weather for the Pacific Northwest. And so the fire season is by no means over. And especially, you know, Labor Day weekend is coming up and you know, people may be getting out and camping and so forth with some hot weather and a lot of dry wood out there. There's still the potential for some major fires. So, you know, we got to be careful.