Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Mark Twain Good one, Mark - and all the funnier for being true. We do talk about the weather. Indeed, with sex, politics and religion pretty much off the table for polite discourse, the weather is one of the few conversational constants we can fall back on.

Not that our weather observations tend to be inspirational. Usually they run along the lines of "Phew/Brr...hot/cold/dry/wet enough fer ya?"

Or, "Man, that was some rain/snow/wind we had last night, eh?"

I know of only one weather conversation that didn't go well. It occurred between then-Prime Minister Trudeau and his Finance Minister Jean Chrétien. Slipping in beside his boss on a campaign bus, Chrétien observed that it "Sure was raining outside."

Trudeau replied icily that he was 'encouraged' to learn that it was raining 'outside' as it would be rather inconvenient if it were raining 'inside'.

Monsieur Crankypants Trudeau aside, most Canadians are far too polite (and meteorologically longsuffering) to cold shoulder anybody's weather observations no matter how banal. Fact is, we tend to revel in such stuff. And nothing gives us greater pleasure than that annual autumnal ritual in which we attempt to divine What Kind of a Winter We're In For.

Canadians have two Meteorological camps to which we can pledge allegiance: Environment Canada and The Old Farmer's Almanac.

Environment Canada is reserved for those among us who see themselves as rational and scientifically minded. The government agency employs millions of dollars worth of satellites, radar, and other technological gewgaws to keep us abreast of the latest news in isotherms, highs, lows, fronts, troughs and other meteorological phenomena.

And then there's The Old Farmer's Almanac, a hoary compendium of gardening nostrums, astrological trivia and sundry ephemera that's been published every year since 1792. But that's just window dressing. What the Old Farmer's Almanac is really about is weather prognostication. The Almanac soothsayers lay out exactly what we can expect to encounter when we open our front doors.

Almanac forecasters don't rely on sophisticated technology. They lean towards sunspots, tide tables and the position of the planets to deduce the coming weather patterns. "In essence," the editor writes, "these pages are unchanged since 1792...the long columns of numbers and symbols reveal all of nature's precision, rhythm and glory..."

Yeah, swell - but how accurate is The Old Farmer's Almanac? Pretty darn accurate, according to, err...The Old Farmer's Almanac. Editor Peter Geiger claims the guide is on the money 80 to 85 percent of the time.

This is a much better batting average than David Phillips would ever claim on behalf of the outfit he works for. David Phillips? Chief climatologist with Environment Canada. Phillips says that even with their supercomputers and a wealth of data, Environment Canada is leery of predicting anything more than ten days ahead. Whereas The Old Farmer's Almanac ball gazers blithely roll the dice for up to two years in advance.

Which brings us to the coming winter. According to The Old Farmer's Almanac, we're in for a bad one.

Really bad.

It says that this winter, most of Canada will experience minus 40 degree weather or worse. It even uses the word 'catastrophic'.

Scared? David Phillips and the folks at Environment Canada aren't. "We never really advise people to bet the family farm on (our forecasts) because it is a bit of crapshoot."

Speaking of crapshoots, I should point out that The Old Farmer's Almanac comes with a hole punched through the top of it right next to the spine. In earlier years, this hole facilitated hanging the Almanac from a nail in the outhouse wall. Pioneer recycling. When a reader was finished reading a page of the Almanac, the person could rip it off and, er, dispose of it appropriately.

Reminds me of the letter U.S. President Harry Truman fired off to a theatre reviewer who panned an acting performance by Truman's daughter.

"I am sitting in the smallest room in the house with your review before me," wrote Truman. "Shortly, it will be behind me."

Let's hope that, come spring, we can all do the same thing with the Farmer's Almanac winter weather forecast.