🍅 Can the Jersey tomato predict the winter?

🍅 This was not a great year for backyard tomatoes

🍅 Does it mean a mild or nasty winter?

Do you want to know what kind of winter we will have this year?  You may need to look no further than the Jersey tomato.

By many accounts, this was not a good year for garden tomatoes.

Many of you reported on social media the appearance of black spots on the bottom of your tomatoes.

The Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station published an interesting discussion about these spots and what causes it.

It’s called Blossom End Rot (BER) and it will “usually be more prevalent when the plants have been growing rapidly and luxuriantly early in the season and then are subjected to prolonged dry weather when the fruits are in an early stage of development.”

Is this a predictor of the weather?

When I stopped at a local farm stand to buy some Jersey Fresh tomatoes, I asked the farmer how his crop was this year.

“Lotta black spot this year,” he said, “Gonna be a cold snowy Winter.”

Wait, what?

Can a Jersey tomato predict the weather?

“I’ve seen it every time.  Black spots mean a dark winter,” the farmer claimed.

I talked to a few more farmers and backyard growers about this.

While not everyone agreed, most claimed they heard about the correlation and others that, indeed, when tomatoes spot on the bottom, it usually means a colder and snowier winter.

Is there any factual basis to this?

Not really.  Well, maybe.

Derek Hardy at the British Meteorological Office (Met) said there may be a slight tendency toward a colder winter if summer high pressure systems persist into the winter months or there are factors such as a La Nina weather pattern.

High pressure could result in fewer clouds and lack of cloud cover leads to colder temperatures.

However, lack of clouds means a lack of moisture and lack of moisture means a lack of snow.

Hardy admits, though, it’s a stretch to make such a link between summer and winter weather patterns.

A consensus of U.S. meteorologists agrees there is no reliable statistical correlation between summer weather and winter weather; meaning a hot, dry summer does not necessarily mean a particularly cold or snowy winter is coming.

Yeah, but….

New Jersey 101.5 Chief Meteorologist Dan Zarrow has never put much stock in long range forecasting, noting they are historically inaccurate.

The most famous long-range forecasts are from the Farmer’s Almanac and Old Farmer’s Almanac.  They are both predicting a mild winter, but one says wet and the other says dry.

READ MORE: All those Farmer’s Almanac winter season forecasts are total bull

Still, actual farmers are surprisingly good at predicting the weather.  So much of their livelihood depends on being able to read Mother Nature’s signs and signals.

Yes, they also rely on the true science of meteorology, but generations of nature knowledge are often passed down among farming families.

Do you believe the Jersey tomato can forecast the weather?

What other indicators have you heard of that signal what kind of winter we will have?

Send us a note and let us know.

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