What the Farmer’s Almanac is Predicting for Winter in the Quad Cities

Whether or not you believe in the predictions of the Farmer's Almanac, it's certainly an interesting read. After all, we've had some pretty cold winters over the last few years, and snow lovers (and haters alike) are always curious to see whether or not storms could be on the horizon.

According to the Almanac, we live in a section of the country called the Heartland, which includes Western sections of Wisconsin and Illinois, Southern Minnesota, a good portion of Kansas and Missouri, most of Eastern Nebraska and all of Iowa.

So what does the Farmer's Almanac have to say about the months ahead for the Heartland? Well first, let's start with the fall. September temperatures will average at 69 degrees (sounds pretty comfortable to me), which is about two degrees above normal. The month will start off warm with scattered storms, while the second week will bring a cold front and rain, more of the same in the third week, and storms then sunny, nice weather to end the month.

While the Almanac's site doesn't give away all of the weather predictions for free, they do say that winter in the Heartland will be milder and drier than normal, with snowfall amounts that will be close to normal or above normal- good news for all of you that enjoy winter sports, bad news for those of us that hate shoveling.

The Almanac adds that January and the beginning of February will be the coldest months (not surprising) and the snowiest periods will be mid to late November (snow at Thanksgiving?!), mid January, and early February.

As always, remember to take these predictions with a grain of salt. Many meteorologists discredit the Almanac because the forecasts tend to be so broad and are unscientific in nature. One thing is for sure-we live in the Midwest, so it will be cold and there will be snow at some points; it's just a matter of when.