Didn’t the weatherman say July was going to be warmer than normal? What’s going on?

First the bad news. Don’t pay much attention to the long-range weather forecasts for rain. With its super computers, Environment Canada’s three-month precipitation forecast is no more accurate than you or I.

"There’s no skill with our precipitation forecasts," said senior climatologist David Phillips. "You can flip a coin and get the same results."

Which means the year-long precipitation forecasts in a farmers’ almanac is bogus, Phillips said.

The best long-range temperature forecast you’re going to get is a choice between warmer, colder or normal and that’s better than a flip of the coin. The probability of a coin toss being right for the next three months is about 33 per cent. By plugging past data into a computer to forecast the next three months, Environment Canada will be right 45 per cent to 55 per cent of the time, Phillips said. If data shows an uptick by one degree, the forecast is "warmer than normal."

"Even with the best science in the world you will never be able to say what the weather will be like in three weeks," Phillips said. "It’s too chaotic. There’s too much noise in the system."

So what’s a farmer to do? "My advice to farmers is this: Look at the seasonal forecast from a curiosity point of view. But don’t make huge economic decisions on it."

So here’s the forecast for August to November: warmer than normal and wetter than normal.

Weather forecasting is a tricky business. Phillips likens handling weather data to interviewing people. Thirty per cent of the people might say they will vote for Party A. Thirty-three per cent say they will vote for party B. You can argue that it’s too close to call but Phillips cannot sit on the fence and, therefore, concludes Party A is most likely to get elected.

An added problem to forecasting is that in the past 10 years Ontario is seeing extreme weather conditions. "A remnant of a hurricane in 2004 turned the driest September in Ottawa on record to the wettest on record: 130 mm of rain in one day. That’s what you’re faced with in long-term forecasts."

Phillips increasingly gets calls from farmers asking him what they should plant. "It’s a crap shoot," Phillips said.

The good news is that Environment Canada’s 5-day forecast and the Weather Channel’s 10-day forecast are worth noting. Here’s Environment Canada’s accuracy: