Old Farmer's Almanac Winter weather 2022-2023 prediction

2022–2023 Winter Weather Forecast Reveal A Tale of Two Winters!

I watch the weather closely,  I'm in Missouri, so I mostly watch the factors that will affect me. This agrees with what I am seeing for the middle of the country this winter. The tangled up summer we have had, the ocean oscillations, and the solar weather effects have been adding up to this for quite some time.

Autumn Brings Warmer, Wetter Weather
About halfway down the page they talk of the winter and part of what they say is

Old Farmer's Almanac wrote:Of note, the La Niña that has been in place for the past 2 years has been expected to become more neutral as the year goes on. However, the latest indications are that the current La Niña could persist all the way through the upcoming winter. La Niña conditions rarely last for three consecutive winters, so this is a setup that we don’t often see.  

This weather pattern is why you may have noticed me saying

Pearl Sutton wrote:I'm living in a rental, a cheap tract house that the heating involves electricity, in an area that's known for losing power (especially in ice storms,) and they have been predicting rolling blackouts for the winter. It's a cheap tract house, with insulation issues at best, I fixed a bunch of them last year, but the structure of this house is just badly built, there's a limit to what I can do.

And making threads like
Adding Heating Zones to the House
Tents as space reducers for heating

I'm battening my hatches. Now is the time to have systems ready to go if you need them! If the power is out in a snowstorm, that's not the time to realize you need a weird bracket to do something that would keep you warmer.  
If you don't need to batten, have a lovely winter!
I'm preparing to batten down though.
:D

Looks like a nice mild snowy winter here in the inland NW!
The best kind!  
Of course with wood heat and making my electricity, not too many worries about rolling blackouts.

I'm close to that line between snowy and dry.  Historically the almanacs long forecasts aren't much better than flipping a coin, but I have already noticed our weather resembles late to mid October more than what has become our normal early September. We're not even breaking 90s every day and we have several predictions of nighttime lows in the 60s over the next week.

Casie Becker wrote:I'm close to that line between snowy and dry.  Historically the almanacs long forecasts aren't much better than flipping a coin, but I have already noticed our weather resembles late to mid October more than what has become our normal early September.  

With so many of these things, if you're on the edge you may get it full force, or it may just miss you. We've had some near misses the last couple of winters and been thankful for it. I was hoping to get more water management systems into place this winter, but alas, too many other things happened (like a pipe to a key well getting a hole in it - still not fixed but getting closer). It looks like we may get another really wet winter - but of course the map Pearl posted doesn't show weather for Canada - like our weather doesn't influence you guys at all???

Jay: Read the links. Canada is talked about.
I tried to keep the post short, you know I suck at that! :D

In a way, I think this year's cold & snowy, here might be easier than last year's, for us. Sadly, the reason is because our guinea pigs have both died (old age - they lived very good, well-loved, ridiculously pampered lives, in a huge pen that took up nearly half the floor of a whole upstairs bedroom), and they were the only reason we had to heat the upstairs, beyond keeping the bathroom pipes from bursting.

Since we no longer have critters upstairs, we can close that off, whenever we're not using those rooms - that will be a huge help. Our ceilings in the kitchen, main floor bath, and our bedroom are all very low - *maybe* 8ft - as opposed to the upstairs cathedral ceilings, and the great room cathedral ceiling. But, we can hang a couple blankets across the kitchen/great room 'arch', to keep the heat in these 3rooms. One small non-electric heater in the upstairs bathroom (at its lowest setting), to keep those pipes from freezing, and 2 down here, should be plenty - especially since we found some (infuriatingly stupid) air leaks between the logs, that we will be sealing, next week, between our bedroom and the attached garage. I think we might actually be warmer this year, than last, just because we can make these modifications - though we're still planning on getting our defective fireplace ripped out and rebuilt as a batchbox/bell rmh, hopefully for next winter.

But, the snowy-cold means livestock care will be more difficult, and the tractor won't start, so that MUST be fixed, before the snow flies!

It says that our winter in southern Oregon is supposed to be mild and dry, that's the opposite of what the locals are saying. But if they mean just winter, they could be right. Often fall and spring are wetter and colder than winter, it's weird but true. We usually think in terms of wet vs. dry season. We've had a wet year so far. We will see.

Almanac.com wrote:Woolly bear caterpillars—also called woolly worms—have a reputation for being able to forecast the coming winter weather. If their rusty band is wide, then it will be a mild winter. The more black there is, the more severe the winter.

That agrees with what I have heard locally...
And this is what locals are seeing this year:

Wooly Bear Caterpillar, pissed off at me for taking a picture

How accurate is this? No clue. But I HAVE never seen them this black. The neighbor says it's all over the local Facebook group that people are seeing this.

That's what everyone here said last year, including the Almanac. Persimmons had spoons as well. Animals seemed to develop thicker coats than usual. We ended up having a very mild winter. I think the many predictors worked well for a long time, but I believe we are in a period of flux where the weather is concerned, and many of them are quite unreliable now. I think the only thing very reliable anymore is the "Red sky at night..." because it uses such a simple fact of physics and is a short term prediction.

I've noticed that in the last couple days, the acorns are dropping like crazy, I've not seen a single squirrel or chipmunk out, collecting them. I'm kinda thinking I want to, though - just in case. After all, they're all fat & sassy after stealing all my peaches (again!), so....

Well now... one of the bug guys here on permies says he thinks that's not a wooly bear at all, it's a Giant leopard moth caterpillar.
Giant leopard moth
So. I may be wrong. Possible they are having a boom year here.
I have no clue :D

I have wood heat from my RMH, and make my own electricity, and have all south facing windows here in the northern hemisphere.  Last winter, I put bubble wrap on all of my windows and doors, which helped raised the temperature in the rooms.  Additionally, I hung quilts over the windows at night using pant hangers with the pinchy clips.  The combo bubble wrap/quilts cut down on drafts around windows and doors and reduced my wood usage.  I took the quilts off each morning to allow light in.

To apply the bubble wrap,  I wet a dish cloth, rubbed water on the window, and stuck on the bubble wrap, which adhered to the glass all winter.  I still have the one on the front door going on one year now, because the door is all glass and I like the privacy the bubble wrap affords, but light still shines through it and I can see what's going on outside and get the first look at anyone at my door without them seeing me.

I have concrete floors, which act as a thermal mass.  When the sun strikes the floor in the winter from the south facing windows, heat is stored in the floor during the day and released back into the room at night.  Nice and toasty!

Well, the cold has hit here, WAY early. I went to 18 last night. Lost all of my gardens. :(
There is possibly some alive under the covers I put on, but I'm not optimistic. It's 5-9 weeks early for a solid freeze here. It'll only last a few days, then I'll uncover the things I covered with light fabrics, and see if any survived. The devastation is horrible. After a bad summer I finally was starting to get produce in the last month, things that should have been bouncing by mid June didn't start till early September. And now, mid Oct, they are all dead.  

Not an auspicious start for the cold season for me.

Pearl Sutton wrote:Well, the cold has hit here, WAY early. I went to 18 last night. Lost all of my gardens. :(
There is possibly some alive under the covers I put on, but I'm not optimistic. It's 5-9 weeks early for a solid freeze here. It'll only last a few days, then I'll uncover the things I covered with light fabrics, and see if any survived. The devastation is horrible. After a bad summer I finally was starting to get produce in the last month, things that should have been bouncing by mid June didn't start till early September. And now, mid Oct, they are all dead.  

Not an auspicious start for the cold season for me.

Awww, Pearl, I’m so saddened by this news.

OMG Pearl!  That really Sucks!

I'm so sorry, Pearl All I had left, after the heat (&critter damage), this summer, were my sweet potatoes in containers, which I brought in, and will take back out, Thursday or Friday. The green tomatoes were picked & brined. The perennials have gone dormant... I guess it's time to move my gardening indoors.

It's not just me...
This cold will be hitting farther south and east of me tonight.

On this map from Weather.gov, the dark blue is freeze warning. I'm not colored dark blue because I froze out last night. This is the people getting it tonight. It's going all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. I'm in MO, I froze out last night, I'm not on the map although I'm going to freeze hard again.
Nasty early cold weather.

Tonight's weather map, the dark blue is first freeze.

Anticipate unusual weather.  One aspect no weather forecaster is discussing is the fact that the major volcanic eruption of Hunga-Tonga-Hunga_Ha'api occurred last January.  Unlike any previously recorded volcanic event, it threw a massive amount of water vapor into the stratosphere (8 to 33 miles up).  According the NASA, it was around 146 teragrams of water or enough to fill 58,000 Olympic pools.  For folks in the US, I ran some conversions and did some comparisons and it seems that Oneida Lake in Upstate NY would not quite equal that amount of water in the stratosphere.  What that means is unclear.  I would expect it would create odd effects around the planet until it dissipates.  The amount of energy boost from freezing all that water vapor alone would equal potentially half as much energy as was released by the Tsar bomb (1961) or about the equivalent of 26 million tons of TNT.  Of course, to melt all that frozen water vapor will take a very large amount of energy and time.  Volcanoes have been known to modify (generally cool) the planet for years.  I anticipate cooler temperatures from this and other natural events currently at play.  I hope not, but better to be ready for colder weather than expecting heat that is not forthcoming.

Sorry for the loss, Pearl. This sudden hard freeze had caused a lot of damage in my garden too. Besides the end to summer crops, several fruit trees were hit hard too. They had plenty green leaves frozen on the branches and blown down by strong winds. Deciduous trees need time to acclimate to seasonal change so the nutrients in the leaves can be mobilized and recycled for next growing season. I am afraid my mulberries, fig and pawpaw won't overwinter and produce well the following year due to the premature defoliation.

The weather has been more drastic even though the average temperature doesn't seem to change much (we will be back into 80 in the few days). The huge deviation from normal temperature like a rollercoaster has a big impact on plants especially during seasonal changes. More often we had early warm spells in spring time. This was the first time we had hard freeze so early instead of gradual chilling in autumn.

Same with precipitation. We had a very wet spring, maybe 12 inches over, followed by record high temperature and severe drought in summer. Although the year to date precipitation is only 3 inches short by now, the crop yield has reduced significantly and grasses are brown everywhere.

On today's agenda is to go out and get all of the sweet potato vines/leaves into the house and I'm going to can them down as cooked greens. I buy frozen greens and can with them sometimes, guess this ain't much different.

The effects of rapid temperature drop in last fall and early winter are starting to show. My forsythia has leafed out with no flower. There are lots of flower buds but they are all dead. Same with my peach tree, this time of the year it should be blooming but all the smaller branch tips died off. Leaves still appear on older branches but I lost most if not all flower buds. I found one article talking about how wide fluctuations in temperature affect trees and bushes.
cold damage peach

May Lotito wrote:The effects of rapid temperature drop in last fall and early winter are starting to show. My forsythia has leafed out with no flower. There are lots of flower buds but they are all dead. Same with my peach tree, this time of the year it should be blooming but all the smaller branch tips died off. Leaves still appear on older branches but I lost most if not all flower buds. I found one article talking about how wide fluctuations in temperature affect trees and bushes.
cold damage peach

Yup, my peach tree has a very few blooms, the redbud would normally be a riot of color, but is very sparse, as are all of them, around us. I have maybe 3 of my strawberries leafing out, so far, no signs at all, of my fiddler or asparagus even breaking the surface. None of my saffron crocus survived... I feel like I'm starting from scratch - and it's a very real possibility. The only things I'm seeing, so far, are irises, daffodils, and blueberry & elderberry leaf buds. Only one elderberry made it through... 🥺😭

At least my sweet potatoes survived, by virtue of coming into the living room, the night before it all hit.

Monitoring weather patterns in Missouri, I closely observe factors impacting the region. The intricate summer, ocean oscillations, and solar weather effects align with expectations for the upcoming winter, a culmination of long-term observations.