The 2025 Canadian Edition of the Old Farmer’s Almanac is now hitting magazine racks across the country, predicting a cool, wet winter for southern Saskatchewan, with snow in the first week of December and a bitter cold holiday season in December.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac is the longest continuously published periodical in North America, having been released every year since 1792. The Canadian version of the almanac began publication in 1982.
The almanac is perhaps most famous for its seasonal weather predictions. Staff use historical data to try and predict the weather in an area up to 18 months in advance, although the Old Farmer’s Almanac acknowledged in its bicentennial edition (in 1992) that neither they nor anyone has the ability just yet to predict the weather with anything like complete accuracy.
“We do use the same formula to figure out our weather predictions that our founder, Robert B. Thomas, used — it’s his formula,” explained Carole Connare, the Almanac’s editor-in-chief. “Of course, back in the day, it was a little harder to crunch all that data. It’s a bit easier to do that now.
“It’s part art, part science. Like any good recipe, it’s got a lot of ingredients. We look at meteorology and climatology, but really, our founder was an astronomer and his fascination was with sunspots.”
Sunspots are temporary disturbances on the surface of the sun caused by enormous magnetic field fluctuations. The magnetic field pressure in a sunspot can easily be up to 2,500 times that of Earth’s magnetic field.
“We’re calling, firstly, for the snowiest times to mid- to late-November to begin with,” Connare continued. “And then snowy ... early and late December, early January, mid-February, and early March. That’s what we’re saying is the snowstorm time.”
Connare said the southern Prairies are one of the only areas in the US and Canada that the Old Farmer’s Almanac (OFA) is predicting consistent snow cover.
“So, skiers and (farmers) and people like that, they like it, so at least it’s good for them.”
Next summer, the OFA predicts a warmer-than-normal spring, followed by a summer that is cooler and wetter than normal. The general prediction for south Saskatchewan in summer 2025 is that it will be cool and rainy, with more-than-average precipitation.
Other highlights of this year’s OFA include trends and changes in agriculture, such as the increased use of robots and other semi-autonomous machines to grow and harvest crops, the rising price of land, and the growing trend to diversify mono-culture fields.
“Farmers (are) adding native plants and some other types of natural repellents and promoters on their farms. ... Gardeners are looking at native plants, like, ‘What will work in my area?’ Those are the (plants) that tend to be drought-tolerant, or more tolerant of extreme conditions, so we see that really trending.”
The OFA is full of the traditional articles on food, fishing, and gardening, with award-winning recipes tested and enjoyed personally by Almanac staff.
You can learn more and/or order a copy of the 2025 Canadian Edition of the Old Farmer’s Almanac at almanac.com/winter-forecast-canada.