Search interest for Northern Michigan continues to underperform actuals for the Upper Peninsula (and, to a lesser extent, the Northern Lower Peninsula). The Upper Peninsula showed a larger increase in search interest during the last several years. Since my current forecast methodology uses the previous year’s actual as a starting point, this tends to increase the error. My previous methodology used the previous month’s value as last actual which would have alleviated this error, but this approach had problems of its own.

Current weather forecasts continue to be warmer than normal while precipitation forecasts are currently at or exceeding normal. It seems at least some snow is forecasted for December especially for the Upper Peninsula.

Since the government agency responsible for the data I use on weather.gov (national weather service) operates at least partly in Asheville, NC, Hurricane Helene has interfered with the provision of some of this data. I had to copy the weather data actuals from Sept 2023 to Sept 2024. Due to my current methodology, this has only an indirect impact on the forecast estimates. We will see if the actual forecasts end up being published next month.