Long Range Weather Forecast

Some stories appeared yesterday reporting that Old Farmers' Almanac had just issued its long range forecast for the 2012-2013 winter.  Here's the relevant (to us) part from a Boston Globe story:

. . . people from the Great Lakes to northern New England should get out their long johns and dust off their snow shovels because it is going to be cold and snowy. It is also supposed to be wet and chilly in the Southeast, and milder for much of the rest of the nation.

The webpage of the Almanac itself is here and while the part I can see doesn't seem as emphatic as the Globe story regarding the amount of snow, it does say our winter will be much colder.

Thinking about the weather at this point is more than just curiosity; it was just last year at the end of October that a surprise snowstorm knocked out our power for several days, forcing the closure of the registry.  And it was at about this time last year that the hurricane swept through western Massachusetts, forcing the closure of the Hamden County Registry of Deeds in Springfield.  Normally, winter weather is just an inconvenient circumstance of going about daily life, but sometimes it is disruptive or severely disruptive.

Our own policy on weather-related closures remains unchanged from prior years.  Here's a blog post I wrote on the topic back in February 2011 which remains applicable for the coming winter.