Brace yourself for a brutal winter because extremely cold temperatures are expected from December to February, according to "The Old Farmer's Almanac."
"Just about everybody who gets snow will have a White Christmas in one capacity or another," editor Janice Stillman told the Associated Press.
The almanac predicts more than average snow and below normal temperatures in New England, snow in the South and freezing temperatures in the Midwest. In the Pacific Northwest, the heaviest snow will fall from mid-December to mid-January and possibly extend to mid-February.
"The Old Farmer's Almanac" also says there will be an early winter rainfall for California this year, but it will not be enough to give the state a relief from drought, which will continue.
"We don't expect a whole lot of relief," said Stillman.
Sandi Duncan, the managing editor of "The Old Farmer's Almanac," said there is no possibility the country is going to have "that mild of a winter."
"We're actually predicting a possible blizzard in the northeast to the mid-Atlantic states sometime in February," said Duncan. "And it does look like the cool temperatures to the cold temperatures are going to hang on. And spring does look kind of rainy," she told WBNS-10TV.
Duncan added possible blizzard conditions may arise in New England Feb. 12-15, which could extend toward the mid-Atlantic coast.
Just how does the almanac predict the weather?
"The Old Farmer's Almanac" has been predicting the weather for more than two centuries. The almanac claims its forecasts are 80 percent accurate, crediting it to a secret formula created by founder Robert B. Thomas back in 1792.
The formula, hidden in a locked black box in Dublin, N.H., has been improved over the years and uses information from three different factors: solar science, climatology and meteorology.
"The Old Farmer's Almanac" is not to be confused with "The Farmer's Almanac," which came out 26 years later than the former.
