Almanac Reader’s Inquiry on Drought Gets Dry Answer
After watching his half-acre of grass wither and dry this spring, Witham Smith wrote a letter to the “Old Farmer’s Almanac.”
Smith, a regular reader of the almanac, asked if the 196-year-old publication’s forecasters, having missed the Midwest’s drought, could predict the dry spell’s end.
He received a pretty dry answer from Judson D. Hale Sr., editor of the almanac.
“We didn’t predict that it was coming and we can’t predict when it will end,” Hale wrote Smith, who lives in suburban Terrace Park.
The almanac claims to be 80% accurate, but Hale acknowledged that it does not predict weather for spring and summer too well.
This year, it predicted that it would be warmer and wetter than normal in the greater Ohio Valley. The almanac gathers statistics for its predictions up to 18 months in advance.
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