Almanac predicts brutal winter

The 2014 Farmers’ Almanac can now be found at bookstores and newsstands, and it’s predicting a harsh, cold winter.

Almanac staff members tell the Associated Press that their forecasts are correct about 80% of the time.

The almanac says the winter will be ‘biting cold and snowy’ for the Great Lakes region, but for the U.P., that’s par for the course.

“We’re going to get winter storms; it happens every year,” National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Kluber said. “Knowing when those will exactly happen right now is difficult to say, but we know they’ll happen. We always get a handful of them or more every single season here, and it’s just the normal.”

The almanac has been published every year since 1818, and its forecasting methods haven’t changed much since then.

So how is the U.P.’s winter looking from a more scientific approach?

“As far as right now, it looks like it may start off a little warmer than normal, a little wetter than normal,” Kluber said. “Not necessarily more severe than normal, but just, in the U.P., what’s severe? You get strong winter storms all the time.”

The almanac also says that the Super Bowl in February will be a messy ‘Storm Bowl’.

The game at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey will be the first Super Bowl ever played outdoors in a cold-weather climate.