MOSCOW, November 1. /TASS/. The coming winter is likely to be somewhat colder in Moscow than the winter of 2015/2016 but no protracted periods of particularly harsh frosts are expected, Roman Vilfand, the director of Russia’s Hydrometeorology Center said on Tuesday.

He also said the intermediate autumn/winter period would also be within the brackets of the long-term averaged annual readings.

"We expect the temperature to be close to the long-term averaged annual readings and I can say practically as much about the (coming) winter, although a review of the long-term annual readings prompts a colder winter, forecasters say there will be no long spells of particularly cold weather," Vilfand told Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily.

He admitted along with it that the veritableness of a long-term forecast always makes up only 70% while the veritableness of short-term forecasts is much higher.

Vilfand said jokingly that a person’s attitude to winter depends to a big degree on the presence or absence of a fur-coat in the wardrobe.

"A recent opinion poll that aimed to expose people’s attitude to winter showed that 90% women living in Moscow hate winter frosts while the remaining 10% adore it," he said. "But a later poll showed 10% Moscow women have very nice fur-coats."

"We hope the precision of forecasts will reach 98% by 2020," he said adding that a situation whether the forecasting would attain a hundred percent precision was highly improbable.

"There’s a sarcastic saying that weather forecasts make only one mistake, but they do it every day," Vilfand said.

"There quality of forecasts is growing all the time over the past several years," he said. "At present we can forecast weather for the coming 24 hours with a precision of 96% and that’s why the joke about the forecasters’ errors isn’t very topical today."

"After 2020, the saying that a forecaster makes an error once in 50 days will hold water," Vilfand said.