The Farmer’s Almanac and the Old Farmer’s Almanac just came out with their annual mid-August forecasts for the coming winter, reviving chatter and head-scratching over the question: Do agricultural producers and others actually pay attention to these predictions?
Some never have.
Jim Magagna was running sheep in Wyoming's Red Desert in the late 1980s when a blizzard blew out of the northeast and buried both his livestock and one of his workers under blowing snow.
Whatever the Farmer's Almanac had predicted that year was irrelevant — it wouldn't have changed anything about that brutal storm or prevented the tragedy that followed.
"Unfortunately, he left the camp to get back, and he got misdirected,” Magagna recalled about losing an employee to hypothermia. “We didn't find his body until the next spring."
For Magagna, now executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, seasonal weather predictions were a luxury his operation couldn't afford to rely on.
While some farmers and ranchers still turn to the almanacs, this time of year the internet bubbles over with chatter about folksy weather forecasting and old-timey sayings like: “For every fog in August, there will be a snowfall in winter.”
Almanacs and weather folklore blend anecdote, astrological musings, sunspots and mystical math, which meteorologists and researchers widely regard as unscientific and fun, but not accurate for serious weather prediction.
Take the woolly bear caterpillars, which eventually become the Isabella tiger moth. If the two black bands across its body are especially wide, then look out — here comes Old Man Winter. Or so the folk wisdom goes.
In an era of rapid forecasting powered by artificial intelligence, wooly bears and almanacs attract both a receptive audience and head scratching skeptics.
The criticisms are nothing new. A study published in the 1981 edition of Weatherwise, showed that only 50.7% of both almanacs' historical temperature forecasts and 51.9% of their precipitation forecasts panned out correctly — barely better than flipping a coin.
Still, across social media and local newscasts, the almanacs’ predictions are widely cited.
The 2025-2026 Farmer's Almanac winter forecast, dubbed "Chill, Snow, Repeat," promises a wild ride with dramatic weather swings, including an early start with cold and snow potentially hitting as early as September.
Don’t believe it? Just check under a log or dried leaves where in Wyoming you can find a woolly bear.
Old Wisdom Dies Hard
Despite mounting scientific criticism, the almanacs persist in agricultural communities, driven partly by nostalgia. Dennis Sun, publisher of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup, remembers when the publications served a genuine purpose.
"Like when I was young, that was probably a pretty good source," Sun said. "Back in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s, they didn't have the computer models they do now."
"They had book stands around the grocery stores and feed stores and stuff," Sun recalled, explaining how almanacs were distributed throughout rural Wyoming. Even today, ranchers and farmers still turn to them this time of year, hoping for insights about winter planning.
"They just wonder about getting enough hay to get everybody through," Sun explained about why agricultural producers seek long-range forecasts in mid-August.
Sun still hears the weather folklore passed down through generations: "There's old wives' tales around that, you know, we've been in a drought and one is it takes a hard winter to break a drought. And then there's another one that if you've got a really hot first week of August, it's going to be a tough winter."
"Probably the elderly people talk about it or old ranchers and stuff. They always still want it," Sun said about the almanacs' persistent appeal.
Del Tinsley, a Wheatland rancher, still finds value in the almanacs: "There's a lot of good information. It gives you the time to plant, for example. They know the best time to castrate your calves so they don't bleed. Planting seasons for corn and stuff like that."
But even Tinsley admitted: "I don't understand how they know their stuff."
Criticisms Mount
"It's more like a crapshoot of trusting something that far into the future since there are times the forecast is blown in the first 24 hours," Rich Segal, meteorologist at Nexstar's KXAN, recently explained.
USA Today has stated that "according to numerous media analyses neither The Old Farmer's Almanac nor the Farmers' Almanac gets it right."
The almanacs base their predictions on correlations between celestial events and meteorological conditions, using "the original rules set forth back in 1818" while accounting for "fluctuations in the environment on Earth, as well as solar activity (sunspots), the motion of the Moon, and other proprietary factors."
But the almanacs refuse to reveal the specifics of their methodology, making scientific peer review impossible.
The editors of the Farmers' Almanac recently blamed "La Niña" for the absence of a "cold spell" at the end of January 2025, and less wet weather than they had originally predicted for the 2024-2025 winter.
Critics note this pattern of post-hoc explanations when forecasts fail to materialize.
Weather enthusiasts on social media have grown increasingly skeptical. One forum user noted about recent almanac predictions: "Every forecast from the late 2023 into early 2024 was completely wrong. They kept promising snow that never came. So my faith in any kind of long-term forecasting is nonexistent."
More than 150,000 free-range sheep in Wyoming were lost during the devastating Blizzard of 1949. (Wyoming PBS) 
The loss of livestock from the Blizzard of 1949 was devastating for ranchers across Wyoming and other surrounding states. (Wyoming PBS)
Scientific Alternative
As the almanacs release their 2025-2026 winter forecasts, Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day is preparing his own seasonal prediction using decidedly different methods that will be published soon.
"I make it a point not to look at the other ones that are coming out when I make mine," Day said. "Because with seasonal forecasts, I trust some more than others. And there have been seasonal forecasts that have just been awful."
Day thinks the timing of mid-August forecasts isn't ideal.
"In my opinion, early September forecasts are going to be better," he said. "However, the public demands August forecasts. So I'm reluctantly doing mine this week."
"There's always a race for who can be first to get the forecast out, because if you're first out with your forecast, you're going to get some more clicks," Day explained. "But another reason... we're at the end of the summer and the things that we look at that drive a winter, we can kind of start to see."
Day particularly objects to how almanacs handle regional forecasting for Western states: "The problem with Wyoming... is that the Continental Divide going through the Rockies really, really can make or break a forecast for a state like Wyoming. If you're east of the divide, your winter could be a lot different than west of the divide, basically because Arctic fronts come out of Canada."
"What ends up for Rock Springs or Green River winter forecasts may be completely different as compared to Casper or Cheyenne," Day explained. "So a lot of forecasts that I see seasonal forecasting are really broad brush and don't take into account our local and our regional microclimates."
Unlike the almanacs' secretive approach, Day openly explains his methodology, which weighs three components: "If I were to weight the forecast, it would be probably 50% ocean, 30% analog, 20% model."
"Sea surface temperature anomalies. Basically, what is the Pacific doing on the equator and what is the Pacific doing in the North Pacific?" Day explained. "Those water temperature trends are real key on how the jet stream will behave during the course of the winter."
Day emphasizes transparency about limitations: "I'm going to be upfront with you. I'm going to tell you what my limitations are. I'm also going to tell you what I call 'failure modes' — which is what could happen that would make my forecast wrong."
"Nobody is clean here. Nobody has a perfect track record with seasonal forecasts," Day acknowledged. "The best we can do with these seasonal forecasts is hit the trend. Trend is your friend."
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
