Winter in Baltimore will be colder than usual this year, with snow beginning around Thanksgiving. But it looks like next spring and summer, despite a rainy June, will be dry to the point of drought.
I can say this with some confidence because The Old Farmer's Almanac for 2010 was released - as always - on the second Tuesday of September, and that's its weather prediction for our area.
And I can be confident of this weather prediction - though it is somewhat vague - because The Old Farmer's Almanac is the oldest continuously published periodical in North America, and it boasts 80 percent accuracy.
There have been lots of almanacs since Robert B. Thomas published this one for the first time in 1792. Another, titled The Farmers' Almanac and published for the first time in 1818, survives today, to the confusion of many.
(Hint: The Old Farmer's Almanac has a yellow cover with the iconic engravings of the four seasons. The Farmers' Almanac is orange, with the picture of a barn at sunset.)
"Almanac" means, literally, calendar of the stars, and this little book was once the bible of farmers and fishermen who worked by the sun, the moon and the tides.
It includes the advice that plants bearing crops above the ground should be planted during the waxing of the moon, while plants bearing crops below the ground should be planted during the waning of the moon, and it provides a chart of plants and phases of the moon to guide you.
Its weather predictions are almost purposely vague, providing as they do a gentle guide to the rhythms of the seasons so a gardener can learn to feel when the time is right to plant.
The actual formula for these weather predictions - made 18 months in advance - is a combination of the sunspot activity on which the founding editor relied and other more scientific pieces of meteorology. The formula is secret and kept in a locked tin box in the almanac's headquarters in Dublin, N.H.
But there is more, much more, in The Old Farmer's Almanac than weather predictions, and with the decline of Reader's Digest, it fills a gap.
There is humor, trivia, trend stories, more recipes than ever, articles on money and health, not to mention gestation and mating tables for animals. There are quirky ads for psychics and all sorts of products designed to make some jobs easier.
There is a pet's best trick essay contest; advice on how to make the best grilled cheese (use a clothes iron), and lots of light-hearted stories. And, almost as important, a special report on the essentials of using animal manure.
Almanacs were sold by peddlers at one time, which has given them the whiff of snake oil. But The Old Farmer's Almanac has come a long way, complete with a sophisticated Web site (almanac.com)
It annually sells about 4 million copies, which are read by an estimated 18 million people - more than enough to cement its credibility.
I am guessing those 18 million people all read the almanac in the same place. All these years later, there is still a hole punched in the corner of the almanac - the better to hang it by a string from the bathroom doorknob.
