By Andrew Macdonald
In Atlantic Canada, we love to talk about the weather.
The 2025 edition of the Old Farmer’s Almanac is now being retailed at stores selling books and magazines. The New Hampshire-based magazine is also stocked at hardware stores such as Home Hardware.
I spoke to the new editor-in-chief of the Old Farmer’s Almanac to get the forecast for the Atlantic Canada zone.
Across the country, the magazine’s Canadian edition predicts a ‘winter with heart of cold’.
“As sure as the sun rises and seasons change, The Old Farmer’s Almanac Canadian Edition is back…and as has been true in every year since 1792, the newest edition features wit and wisdom, tried-and-true advice, and the Almanac’s much-anticipated, traditionally 80 per cent accurate weather forecasts,” says the oldest continuously published periodical.
“What is the latest prediction? The almanac is forecasting a winter with a “heart of cold” although big freezes and heavy snowfall will be centered in Ontario and eastern Manitoba, while most of the rest of the country will get a reprieve from snow-shoveling and super-cold temperatures.
“‘Temperate’ is on tap for most of the country this winter, but let it snow in Ontario!,” proclaims Carol Connare, the Almanac’s editor.
“While Saskatchewan will be (mostly) spared the mountains of snow arriving to the east, the area should brace for below-average temperatures, as should southern sections of British Columbia and Alberta. The most southerly portions of Alberta and Saskatchewan will also be all wet this winter, with a few snowstorms interspersed with other types of precipitation,” says the mag.
Summer 2025 – a wet season
“The summer of 2025 will usher in a rainy season for much of Canada. In fact, northern parts of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, as well as southern Ontario, will experience a “gardener’s summer” with balmy temperatures and lots of moisture—which will mean little watering and great growing!”
Atlantic Canadian Forecast
The Old Farmer’s Almanac says it has thousands and thousands of readers in Atlantic Canada as farmers across the region and gardening enthusiasts make up the bulk of the periodical’s readership.
In a news chat with The Macdonald Notebook, editor-in-chief Carol Connare previewed the region’s forecast for the benefit of my readers. The 2025 edition is her first Almanac edition since becoming top editor at the employee-owned enterprise, under the umbrella Yankee Publishing.
The Old Famer’s Almanac is now on bookshelves and hardware stores. Its popular long-range forecasts include predictions for weather in the Atlantic.
The almanac calls its weather prognosis ‘predictions’, and says its forecasts are 80 per cent accurate.
Last winter, it predicted a winter white-out in Atlantic Canada, and certainly parts of Nova Scotia — particularly Antigonish and parts of New Brunswick like Moncton — got lots of snow. Halifax last winter only had three or four snowstorms.
In a news chat with The Macdonald Notebook, editor-in-chief Carol Connare previewed the region’s forecast for the benefit of my readers. The 2025 edition is her first Almanac edition since becoming the top editor at the employee-owned enterprise, under the umbrella Yankee Publishing. (Contributed).
Speaking of the 2024 predictions, and the accuracy of those weather patterns, Connare says the magazine’s predictions last year were accurate for some zones.
“It depends on where you live. We have different regions. Every year in the Almanac, we do have a page – in the Canadian edition it is on page 97 (where it writes about the accuracy of the past year’s predictions)”, she explains. “Our predictions are based on departure from normal, for precipitation and for temperature.
“Generally, we have been doing very well with the temperature (predictions), but that precipitation because in a warming world, there are more of these localized extreme events.”
While last year’s forecast was a white-out, “but maybe higher elevations are getting it, we usually see,” she adds. “We are seeing a weirder pattern in some places.”
She says two years ago, the Almanac was 100 per cent accurate on temperature predictions.
“This year our forecasts for the direction of temperature were only correct in two of the seven regions of Canada, so we had a less than 30 per cent accuracy rate. But our warmer forecasts for Atlantic Canada and Quebec held true, but the prediction of colder weather farther west did not come together,” she tells The Macdonald Notebook.
“We are seeing our (2024) snowy forecast for Atlantic Canada and Western Prairies were correct. Our combined accuracy rate was 64.3 per cent, which is a little lower than our 80 per cent traditional accuracy rate,” she says. “But then of course, if you look at a particular city we might have been right on.”
Atlantic Canada Winter 2025 Predictions
In Nova Scotia, the province has a variety of weather patterns. Halifax is influenced by the Atlantic Ocean; the North Shore, such as Amherst & Antigonish, is influenced by the Northumberland Strait; the Highlands of Cape Breton are influenced by the Gulf of St. Lawrence; and western Nova Scotia deals with the Bay of Fundy.
“Overall, what we are saying is that winter is going to be milder for all of Atlantic Canada. What that means is less precipitation than normal, and warmer temperatures than normal, and that is overall. We’re saying precipitation will be less the farther west you go, and farther east, more precipitation,” she adds.
“We are calling for the snowiest periods to be early December, mid-January and early and late February,” she adds.
“The cold snaps, we are saying — mid-December and late February.
“Eastern Nova Scotia is going to see more precipitation than normal. Western will be drier but colder and wetter where you are in (Halifax).
“And, that is true even through the spring and even into the summer. We are calling for the very furthest eastern Atlantic Provinces to really be getting persistently more precipitation than normal.”
Summer 2025 Forecast
Summer’s forecast is for lots of rain in Nova Scotia, she says. That is a boon to vegetable and flower enthusiasts: “People who grow things do not mind if they do not have to water so often.”
In a news chat with The Macdonald Notebook, editor-in-chief Carol Connare previewed the region’s forecast for the benefit of my readers. The 2025 edition is her first Almanac edition since becoming top editor at the employee-owned enterprise, under the umbrella Yankee Publishing.
