LEWISTON, Maine - As publications go, The Farmers' Almanac isn't the place to find edge. No glossy finish, no partially dressed cover models - just practical advice, delivered with an air of nostalgia, on everything from "weed cuisine" ("if you can't beat them, eat them!") to the best time to cut firewood or dig a hole based on the phase of the moon and its position in the zodiac.
But with memories raw from last winter's wrath in the Northeast, the 185-year-old publication is generating a buzz for its disheartening prediction for winter 2004: Expect largely a repeat of last year.
That means cold and a parade of storms from February through early spring, with February alone bringing as many as five storms, says the almanac's calculator, who goes by the pseudonym Caleb Weatherbee, his real identity a secret.
"Do I think you're going to get 44 inches of snow? I don't think you're going to have a storm of that magnitude, but there are a couple of good whoppers in there," says editor Peter Geiger, 52, whose family has owned the almanac since the early 1930s.
"Remember," he adds, "I'm just the messenger."
The almanac's predictions, made two years in advance, are calculated from sunspot activity, planet positions, the effect of the moon on Earth and a mathematical formula developed in the early 1800s that's a secret even to its editors.
The publication claims to be about 80 percent accurate, based on an unscientific tally of responses from "weather watchers" and other readers around the country who make it their business to keep score.
The almanac accurately predicted last year's storm that dropped 30 inches of snow on the Northeast, and it came close with Hurricane Isabel, which it missed by one day. The weekend before last, however, the Mid-Atlantic forecast was for rain, when parts of Maryland got more than a foot of snow.
The forecasting method is decidedly low-tech compared with the National Weather Service's use of fancy climate models, satellite data and supercomputers.
But unlike the Weather Service, the almanac, published in August, took a stand on winter weather months ago. In October and again in November, the government's forecasters crunched the numbers and declared they couldn't see a clear picture of the winter ahead. The next update is scheduled for tomorrow.
