Michigan Environment

Old Farmer’s Almanac 225 years old and still going strong

Michigan Public | By Stateside Staff

Published September 28, 2016 at 5:10 PM EDT

Clark said the Old Farmer's Almanac is able to break down weather patterns a year or more in advance by paying attention to the solar cycle.

Our conversation with Tim Clark, editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

In this all-too-fast-paced era we live in, it's comforting to see something that's managed to stick around for 225 years – the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

What Massachusetts schoolteacher and bookseller Robert B. Thomas started in 1792 is still with us. The 2017 edition is now out.

Though the almanac is “old,” it evolves every year, editor Tim Clark said.

“We’re making a change, but we’re not making too much of a change,” he said. “It’s no longer something of great use to farmers, but then only one percent of our population are now working in agriculture. But we have more than 40 million households that garden. So, we put more information in about gardening.”

Astronomy, he said, is the central topic of the almanac today.

“While we only give about 20 pages to weather forecasts, we give considerably more space to showing exactly what’s happening in the sky every day of the year,” he said.

To hear more about the almanac's contents – including the August 2017 eclipse and why it could be crucial to take the solar cycle into account when monitoring Earth’s climate – listen above.(Subscribe to the Stateside podcast oniTunes,Google Play, or with thisRSS link)