Lisa Hoffman, age 11, of Gary, Indiana, far her question:

How does the Farmer's Almanac predict the weather?

The almanac gives day by day weather prediction for a whole dear ahead of the events. The weatherman reports the coming events only a day or two ahead. His forecast depends upon a great deal of work done by a lot of trained meteorologists. He is a more reliable weather prophet than the almanac, though throughout the year, the almanac predictions may be correct or fairly correct many more times than they are wrong.

People started publishing yearly almanacs with weather predictions long before the beginning of scientific meteorology. The predictions were based on data gathered through many past years. For perhaps 100 years, the first week of June had brought warm sunshine. It was fairly safe to predict that next year's first week of June would be warm and sunny. For ages, March has been a blustery season. A sensible almanac would predict winds and lashing showers for next year's month of March. When these predictions are based on seasonal records of the past they tend to be fairly correct. But they cannot be expected to set the dates and the times for sudden storms such as hurricanes and tornados