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Michigan Outdoor Recreation Search Interest Summary
This is a summary of my project analyzing Google search interest for 10 forms of outdoor recreation from inside Michigan: atving, boating, camping, fishing, hiking, kayaking, rving, hunting, skiing, and snowmobiling. I’ve also created models to provide short term forecasts for search interest. The main project page can be found at the link at the
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December-February Northern Michigan Search Interest
This is my search interest forecast for December-February. The main project page for this forecast, and corresponding background information, is linked at the bottom of this page. Search interest for November was higher than last year and higher than forecasted. We seem to be getting more months in the last half of 2025 that are
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November-January Northern Michigan Search Interest
This is my search interest forecast for November-January. The main project page for this forecast, and corresponding background information, is linked at the bottom of this page. Search interest for October was similar to last year. This was similar to forecasted for the Lower Peninsula and higher than forecasted for the Upper Peninsula. We seem
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Michigan Outdoor Recreation Installment 10
This is my ninth installment for forecasting search interest for ten forms of outdoor recreation in Michigan. This is my last main installment for this project. Previously, I developed models for outdoor recreation in Michigan which are based on weather: maximum/minimum temperature, precipitation, and snow depth. This installment is about getting forecasts for these weather
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October-December Northern Michigan Search Interest
This is my search interest forecast for October-December. The main project page for this forecast, and corresponding background information, is linked at the bottom of this page. Search interest for September continued to be lower than last year, especially for the Lower Peninsula. Both were very close to the forecast (though slightly higher). The peak
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Michigan Outdoor Recreation Installment 9
This is my ninth installment for forecasting search interest for ten forms of outdoor recreation in Michigan. This installment provides a final cross validation comparison between two of the three models I developed during previous installments: Unsurprisngly, the best model depends on which of the ten forms of outdoor recreation you are modeling. It’s important to
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Summer Ends
“Since you could sing all summer, you can dance all winter.” –The Ant to the Grasshopper At the end of July, I drove down a dirt road forested on one side and a clearing on the other. This was the same clearing I wrote about before where there was a burn and the grass in
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September-November Northern Michigan Search Interest
This is my search interest forecast for September-November. The main project page for this forecast, and corresponding background information, is linked at the bottom of this page. Search interest for August continued to be lower than last year. The Lower Peninsula value was extremely similar to forecasted. The Upper Peninsula value was higher than forecasted.
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Michigan Outdoor Recreation Installment 8
This is my third model option for forecasting search interest for ten forms of outdoor recreation in Michigan. This approach uses a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) model. This is a recurrent neural network that considers sequences of values while also considering a state when creating model predictions. This model shows a lot of promise.
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August-October Northern Michigan Search Interest
This is my forecast for Google search interest for Northern Michigan places, August-October 2025. July was the peak annual search interest. This peak was slightly lower for both peninsulas than last year. However, it was higher than forecasted. I had forecasted that search levels would be 80% of the 2022 peak for the Lower Peninsula