WSET.com - ABC13The Mythical Blizzard by Sean Sublette

You can't stop rumors, you can only hope to contain them. So here's the latest one that has found its way to the newsroom:

"I heard that the farmer's almanac said there would be a blizzard in March."

Well, which almanac?

There are two that I know of: "The Old Farmer's Almanac" and "The Farmers' Almanac."

Neither says anything about a cataclysmic blizzard in March.

Remember the old summer camp game when everyone sits in a large circle, and one person whispers a message into the next person's ear? That person turns and whispers the same message to the next person. And so on, and so on, until the message goes all the way around the circle and gets back to the person it started with. By then, the message no longer resembles its original contents.

This happens all the time in weather. Especially high-profile weather events, like snowstorms and hurricanes. Someone hears a nugget of a forecast, probably out of context, and repeats it. Henceforth, the rumor gains a life of its own.

Now, as a general rule, I do not believe any farmers' almanac. Weather forecasting involves certain physical relationships: thermodynamics, conservation of mass, wave motion, and other things I would probably never mention on television. Heaven knows we are not perfect, but I think on the large scale, we do a pretty good job.

How do the farmers' almanacs do it? They don't tell. So why should I trust them? They allude to solar cycles, moon phases, tides. One of them even claims their secret weather forecasting formula is locked away in a box in New Hampshire (for some reason, this makes me hungry for fried chicken).

To be fair, one almanac mentions that they use climatological records, and they hold firm to the belief that certain weather patterns are repeated over the long term. I can respect that… it's called analog forecasting. So I would imagine some of their methodology is perfectly valid, but I cannot verify it, so I cannot trust it.

Amazingly, one of them boasts 80% accuracy. If it were that good, they would all be rich from trading weather-based commodities.

In the end, I'd like to see the data and decide for myself. Maybe they are on to something, but I need more evidence. Much more.

Looking at climatology, statistics, and mathematical simulations, I would say the odds of having a blizzard in Virginia this month are very small. True, there will be a large-scale storm passing through this weekend, but we will be too warm to have snow. It will turn colder than normal after that storm goes by, so we think most of next week (15th-21st) will have temperatures below normal. Beyond that date, it is exceedingly rare to have a genuine snowstorm in Virginia in areas east of Interstate 81.

So is it impossible? No. But I'd put the odds of getting 3+ inches of snow in Central or Southside Virginia at about 5% this month.

Of course, even a dead clock is correct two times a day.