How Often Is Punxsutawney Phil Right With His Winter Predictions?
Groundhog Phil has spoken and many of us don t like what he has to say! Ha.
Here s a little background if you need it: Groundhog Day fell earlier this month - on February 2nd to be exact. Every year on this day, the famous groundhog Punxsutawney Phil comes out of hiding to make some weather predictions. If he sees his shadow, it means we will see six more weeks of winter. If he doesn t, it means we will see an early spring. Of course, he saw his shadow but in his defense, we probably would have seen six more weeks of winter regardless. This is the Northland, after all!
Another month is upon us and it s time to take a look at just what February has in store for us weather-wise.
To come to this conclusion, I always turn to the Old Farmer s Almanac. They make long-term weather predictions by region and although some are skeptical of their methods, it is always fun to read what they are forecasting for a particular month or time period.
To kick off the month, the Old Farmer s Almanac is predicting periods of snow showers and mild conditions. This is expected to last through the thirteenth of the month.
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Lake Superior Ice Coverage Down 20% So Far In Winter 2021
Despite having one of the coldest mornings we ve had in a while, Lake Superior still isn t icing up all that well. The National Weather Service Duluth, Minnesota office reports that compared to the average ice coverage for Lake Superior, we are down quite a bit.
They share a graphic where you can see that we are down on average about 20% of normal ice concentration since December of 2020. Normally by February, we should see ice concentrations upwards of 40%. The peak of the ice occurs typically in late February or early March, and breaks up into the spring by May. There are some exceptions to ice out, but the averages are represented on the chart. I remember when we had our first polar vortex as we called it in 2013. That following spring there was still ice chunks on park point on Memorial Day Weekend.