One of the first almanac predictions for the 2008-09 winter comes from the Old Farmers Almanac, Lewiston, Maine. If its prediction is accurate, brace for a cold and snowy time.

For our area, which is just on the edge of the almanac’s Ohio Valley region, February may see some of the snowiest weather. And the prediction also calls for the white stuff to fall in time for Thanksgiving.

Overall, temperatures are expected to be colder than normal. “Numb’s the word!” is how the 192-year-old publication describes the winter season....

On another weather note, NBC25-TV (WHAG) has seen the departure of weatherman Chad Merrill.

A Cumberland native and 2002 graduate in meteorology at California University of Pennsylvania, Merrill is now working for the WeatherBug in Germantown. He is doing weather Webcasts, according to Mark Kraham, WHAG’s news director.

Merrill started his weather broadcasting career in Johnstown, Pa., at WJAC-TV before moving to Hagerstown....

Former Frederick mayor Jennifer Dougherty, a Democrat who is trying to unseat Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett in the Sixth Congressional District race, apparently will have more time to campaign now. She has sold her restaurant, Jennifer’s, in downtown Frederick.

The restaurant will be closed for a few weeks while the liquor license and other permits are transferred. The new restaurant will be known as Mick’s New American Bistro....

Scripps Howard News Service reports that the “smart money” is going to Barack Obama.

College professors and other educators have donated nearly $10 million to Obama’s campaign chest this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group devoted to examining campaign financing.

John McCain has received just about $1.2 million from educators this year, according to the center....

The News & Observer in Charlotte, N.C., and The Herald-Sun in Durham, N.C., recently carried feature stories about the 104th birthday of Dr. Harold (Gus) Eliason, a retired Cumberland pediatrician who now resides at The Forest at Duke retirement community in Durham.

Eliason is the oldest resident at the facility and moved there when Forest at Duke opened in 1992. “Hell yes, I was here before they opened. I and a couple other folks cut the damn weeds down for construction,” the still-feisty Eliason told the Durham newspaper....

Readers who enjoy our For Better or For Worse comic strip are seeing the feature start over again.

Although the strip’s creator, Lynn Johnston, previously announced she would be retiring, she has changed her mind. Instead, she will use new comic strips drawn in the style she used 29 years ago when the Patterson family first appeared on comics pages.

Johnston will select material from her collection of nearly 10,000 archival strips to help retell the Patterson family’s story as her longtime fans remember it, pausing in spots to update references that seem confusing or even to flesh out characters she didn’t explore in the first telling, according to a news release from University Press Syndicate, which distributes the strip....

From time to time, there are suggestions that Cumberland adopt a curfew for teen-agers. But Westminster in Carroll County has had an unenforced curfew for years and is now on the verge of dropping it.

The curfew of 10 p.m. to 30 minutes before sunrise has been deemed unconstitutional, according to The Carroll County Times. The American Civil Liberties Union wrote to the city that the curfew is unconstitutional. It cited a similar curfew in Frederick that was ruled obsolete by the Maryland Court of Appeals....

Seen on the Internet — Actual newspaper headlines:

• One-armed man applauds the kindness of strangers

• Rangers get whiff of Colon

• Federal agents raid gun shop, find weapons

• Camouflaged Army vehicle disappears

• Lansing residents can drop off trees

• British Left waffles on Falkland Islands

• Prosecutor releases probe into undersheriff

Jan Alderton is managing editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Contact Jan Alderton at jpalderton@times-news.com.