What’s The Difference Between The ‘Old’ And ‘New’ Farmer’s Almanac?
I don't really know the difference. Do you?
With all the hub-bub about how this winter is going to shape up, I made a joke to a co-worker about how the predictions in the Farmer's Almanac. That joke was followed by, "The old or new Farmer's Almanac?" And with that one innocent comment, I was stopped in my tracks.
I had to go into a hardcore internet frenzy on the topic and do some serious searching. And at first it was still pretty frustrating. If you simply go to FarmersAlmanac.com or Almanac.com, each boasts about their place in history as the premier source for all things farmer.
Then how do you really tell which is which?
There are some simple differences. The "old" Farmer's Almanac has been around since 1792, and is based out of Lewiston, Maine. The "new" Farmers' Almanac was established in 1818, and is based out Dublin, N.H.
To be honest, that seems to be about where the differences ended, as they both serve the purpose of supplying farmers with advance information for the year about weather and growing conditions, and other related things.
However, while digging around to suss out the differences, I did find this cool info-graphic that really lays out the subtleties of the two publications. It lists the ways each predicts the weather, what regions of weather they predict, who the first publisher was, and some other cool info.
So ultimately, which one is more accurate?
When it comes to predicting the weather, both claim an accuracy rate between 80 percent and 85 percent. One study measured the Old Farmer's Almanac's accuracy rate at 52-percent. Not bad, considering most meteorologists say forecasting isn't very reliable beyond 10 days out.
So, is there a difference? Maybe? But I'd say it's all in the semantics. In that case, all things being equal, you go with whichever one makes you happy and let your Old or "New" Farmer's Almanac freak flag fly.