A Saskatchewan man is keeping up an odd and old family tradition: predicting the winter's weather with a pig spleen.

Jeff Woodward, who was in Calgary on Thursday, actually works for Environment and Climate Change Canada — though not in the weather forecasting department.

"I am an engineer, so yes, there is a bit of a conflict in my world," he said with a laugh in an interview with the Calgary Eyeopener.

Woodward, whose professional work involves the Saskatchewan watershed, was in Calgary this week giving a presentation on rivers in southern Alberta.

Passion for spleens

His uncle, Gus Wickstrom, became something of a local celebrity in his hometown of Tompkins, Sask., even appearing on The Daily Show regarding his hobby, pig spleen weather prognosticating.

"When he retied from farming, he took it up with great vigour," Woodward said. "He started doing predications for people in the U.S. They would actually send him spleens from different spots in the U.S."

Jeff Woodward's Uncle Gus holding a pig spleen in 2002 in Tompkins, Sask. (Pig Spleen Weather Prognostication/Facebook)

A spleen, as the tradition goes, can be used to predict the coming winter weather for about a 200-kilometre radius from where the pig lived, Woodward said.

Woodward has been learning the tradition since Wickstrom died 10 years ago, and hosts annual pig spleen forecasting parties and publishes lengthy predictions.

Jeff Woodward holding a spleen. (Pig Spleen Weather Prognostication/Facebook)

The tradition started several hundred years ago when Woodward's ancestors lived in Sweden. As farmers who raised hogs, they would a butcher a pig before each winter.

The spleen, they noticed, would have varying amounts of fat and deposits on it, which they believed indicated the weather for which the hog was preparing.

When the family came to Saskatchewan, Woodward's grandfather and father, "with a grain of salt, they would jokingly do it whenever they butchered."

Woodward said you look at the spleen's thickness and divide it into six parts for the coming six months, January through to June. The temperature is measured in the thickness and the precipitation by the fat, he said.

Jeff Woodward, left, with Uncle Gus Wickstorm in 2001. (Pig Spleen Weather Prognostication/Facebook)

"I would say my Uncle Gus was very good. He did some predictions that were very outlandish — snow in June and things like that — and they came true," Woodward said.

"My predications probably haven't been quite as good as his, but ... they're always better than the long-range forecast from the scientific organizations."

'Good-natured banter'

At work, there's "lots of good-natured banter" between himself and scientists and climatologists. The jokes continued into this winter, when at an agriculture conference in Saskatchewan his team put him on a mock debate panel with David Phillips, Environment Canada's senior climatologist.

Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips, left, and engineer Jeff Woodward battled it out over the weather at an agriculture event in February. (Pig Spleen Weather Prognostication/Facebook)

He said of course, there's no scientific proof that this is real but he believes there's logic behind the folklore. Animals do sense when a winter will be hard, he noted, and for instance, pigs may eat more and muskrats might build their huts thicker.

As for predicting the weather in Calgary while he's here, Woodward said he didn't have a spleen.

"I don't generally carry one with me," he said. "If I was at home, I'd have one in the freezer."

​With files from Donna McElligott and the Calgary Eyeopener.