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Detroit's Seasonal Snowfall Maps 2004 - Present


Powerball

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I do not at all doubt that the far NE side of town usually is among the lowest totals....but my point is the erroneous GP data completely, 100% throws off the data for Wayne county. They take that laughable total and extend it south and west til you hit DTW (rather than NE into Macomb) and its just ridiculous. From what is gathered, the EastPoint, West Bloomfield, and myself are pretty reliable for daily snowfall....Dearborn and especially Grosse Pt are not...and DTW is the official. That is pretty much all the data that encompasses southern Oakland/Macomb into Wayne co.

For 2011-12, GP reported NO snow on Dec 5, Jan 15, Jan 19, Jan 28-29, Feb 14....all days when they probably had 1"+.

Lets look at 2010-11. That is the worst of all. 30.2". LOL. Are you kidding me? Most of SE MI saw that in FEB. ALL snowfall data for Feb is missing other than 8" on Feb 20th. Also the Mar 5th snowstorm is M. That means that FOUR advisory/warning snowfalls from Feb/Mar are completely missing, totaling probably at minimum 20". Thats not even counting some other smaller falls are scattered missing from DJF. So because this observer missed recording 2 feet of snow during this winter, that gets overlooked and extrapolated to make a fabulous winter look like a somewhat below average winter for the heart of Detroit? Plain wrong.

Wha I'm probably going to do this year is get a new snowboard and keep my own measurements of the snowfalls, just to see how accurate the maps from DTX really are.

The general trend I can buy, but the differences in amounts seem way too extreme. I'm not talking about the lollipops around Flint and Saginaw, but the general difference between the, say, 30-40 inches in most of the area and the 25-25 inches around the city.

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My favorite are the wildly different totals between Romulus and Dearborn, that's like what, 6 miles and no elevation change? 20-30" annual difference almost every year. :whistle:

Like I said before, those maps only show the bias and flaws of whatever coop station is reporting. The eastern lakes have so many nickel and dime events, so if you have 30-40 measurable snow events in the winter season and are off a half inch here, an inch there, next thing you know you have a 30-40" difference than someone 5 miles away. Let's assume that there was a coop spotter stationed every 5 miles and then you plotted the 100's of totals across SE Michigan, you'd end up with a map that looked like a kid finger painted on a slice of swiss cheese. Realistically, there won't be 20-30" lollipops every couple miles, but because of human error and the subjectivity of snow measuring, that's what happens when you plot it out.

Wha I'm probably going to do this year is get a new snowboard and keep my own measurements of the snowfalls, just to see how accurate the maps from DTX really are.

The general trend I can buy, but the differences in amounts seem way too extreme. I'm not talking about the lollipops around Flint and Saginaw, but the general difference between the, say, 30-40 inches in most of the area and the 25-25 inches around the city.

If there were observers every 5-10 miles, you'd have a more realistic view of actual snowfall totals. This could be a combination of COOP, CoCoRahs, and trained storm/snow spotters. It would give a better "hi-res" picture. Of course, it would also highlight those who consistently mis-measure. These anomalies could then be "smoothed" on maps to give a more accurate interpretation. IWX does this on a daily basis on their website for both and snowfall and it still isn't entirely accurate.

Wishful thinking.

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Wha I'm probably going to do this year is get a new snowboard and keep my own measurements of the snowfalls, just to see how accurate the maps from DTX really are.

The general trend I can buy, but the differences in amounts seem way too extreme. I'm not talking about the lollipops around Flint and Saginaw, but the general difference between the, say, 30-40 inches in most of the area and the 25-25 inches around the city.

Doesn't the city average 40.1?

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