I wouldn’t lose any sleep over this if I were you (yet), but Illinois is being warned to brace itself for a major winter storm that is allegedly coming for one specific week in January of 2025.
I want to be clear that this is not a forecast. It’s not even a prediction as much as it is an outlook about what major winter storms are expected to develop during the winter months at the end of this year and the start of next. One major site thinks it knows when Illinois will see the worst winter event of the season.
The “new” Farmer’s Almanac has focused on one specific week in January that they expect will see not one but possibly two winter storm systems directly impacting Illinois. They say that January 20 to 23 and 24 to 27, 2025 will see “copious amounts of snow, rain, sleet, and ice” which they say will include “frequent bouts of heavy precipitation, as well as strong and gusty winds”. Shiver.
How can Farmer’s Almanac know when winter will get bad in Illinois?
That is a fair question and what I asked also. They say their methodology has been in place since 1818 and uses “correlations between celestial events and various meteorological conditions”. Alrighty, then. Are the accurate though? Climavision says that Farmer’s Almanac claims they’re accurate 82% of the time, but records show it’s more like 52%…