Weather forecasts continue to be warm and relatively dry. If this continues into summer, it may have a more positive impact on Lower Peninsula search interest, especially on the west side of the state where search interest for many places is more sensitive to weather. The impact of warm summers on Upper Peninsula search interest is more mixed. Regardless, Upper Peninsula search interest increases year over year in general. I forecast higher search interest for both peninsulas over the next three months.

I am relatively satisfied with my modified forecast methodology implemented last month. Future improvements might focus on addressing variation in Google search interest results between different data pulls. Due to the fact that the Google search interest pulls are internally normalized, I repull the entire series every month. However, these data pulls always differ. Below, I picture the March and February data pulls for the Lower Peninsula: