Farmer's Almanac coincides with your hopes for 2012 western WA.

Hip hip hooray! We want to grow birdhouse gourds for the kids this year & other squash.

How accurate is the farmer's almanac?

As accurate as a coin toss. I was trying to prolong your hope.

I have some difficulty understanding what they're saying, but it looks to me like NOAA is saying it will be a cooler, wetter spring than usual in the PNW, but nothing about the summer that I can see.

Awhile back the looooong term forecast was for colder and darker springs and hotter summers. Last year we got the colder and darker spring already, and it stuck around.

NOAA or NWS long-range predictions are typically 30/60/90 days in duration. Next summer is further out than that. There may be chatter about (strong : weak)(la nina : el nino) has a percentage of the time resulted in (cold : hot)(wet : dry) upcoming seasons.

Akin to the song "Garden Party", the weather can't please everyone, so you plant to please yourself.

I was talking about the climate.

I'd be thrilled if our summer was as pleasant this year as it was last year.

There are some long term climate models available - they are pretty vague and not all that accurate, though. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/90day/

In general, we can likely expect colder weather at all times of the year, since (most regional, professional climatologists seem to think) we re-entered the cool phase of Pacific Decadal Oscillation in 2006. Basically this means that the North Pacific off our coast has cooled somewhat below average and is likely to remain that way for the next 20 - 30 years based on how it has happened in the past.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PDO.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation

The W.J. Burroughs book Weather Cycles Real or Imaginary? may be a good read for those interested in scientific summaries of various long-term weather influences.

So the colder and darker spring is expected to stick around for the rest of my life.

I should move.

Best to stay put. There have been two hot summers since the Cool Decadent Oscillation mentioned above kicked in.