People are wildly sharing the news that the Farmer's Almanac is predicting a brutally cold and snowy winter this year. Did you know that they also predicted a brutally hot summer across most of the country this year? Hope you didn't bake to death in the 70-degree, low humidity weather.

The Farmer's Almanac is famed for its long-range outlook — which the company claims is "80 percent accurate" — that it develops through a mixture between a secret formula developed back in the 1700s and modern technology.

As we've heard meteorologists reiterate time and time again over the past week, there is no skill in accurately predicting specific weather events more than a week before they occur. A meteorologist for Penn State sums it up nicely:

"The ability to predict events that far in advance is zero," says Knight. "There's no proven skill, there's no technique that's agreed upon in science to be able to do that."

[...]

According to Knight, the Almanac's secrecy is part of the problem.

"If you have something that's really innovative and shows skill, then bring it before your peers," he says. "You don't have to show us everything in case you want to make a business out of it, but give us some idea."

The Farmer's Almanac is basically the "unskewed polls" of the weather world, using secret formulas and zero skill to predict major weather events only to have things turn out wrong. If given the option of listening to the Farmer's Almanac or trusting a forecast put out by Half Pint the Slow Loris (awww, LOOK AT HIM), I'd trust Half Pint.

[Image via AP]