Contest deadline approaching for best guesses.

Is snow getting deeper or thinner in Leelanau County?

A quick look at statistics over the past 50 years reveals the answer: thinner.

And that is what Maple City weather observer Harold Feigel has seen. Feigel provides temperature and precipitation totals from the Maple City area that appear in the Leelanau Enterprise each week.

Readers may want to consider Feigel as a source as they complete their snowfall contest entry blank below. They have until Friday, Oct. 19, to submit their best guess for the approaching winter.

At stake is a lot pride, and some money. The person with the closest guess to the actual snowfall measured at the county Road Commission’s Suttons Bay garage will win $200. Second prize is worth $100, with $50 going to third place.

Feigel was raised in Glen Arbor. After graduating from Glen Lake High School in 1974, he spent 20 years in the Air Force. After retiring in 1994, he and his wife, Nancy, moved back the county.

“I’ve always liked weather, keeping track of things,” he explained.

While stationed in Texas he became a spotter for the National Weather Service (NWS), keeping track of violent storms as they weather came and went in his part of the state. When he moved back to the county, NWS officials from the Waters, Mich., office asked if he wanted to continue.

Feigel assumed the duties of taking daily temperature and precipitation readings as the official records keeper for the NWS in the summer of 1994. That first year he recorded a solid snow fall in Maple City.

“We had a lot of snow then. Those first two winters after we came back, we had good snows,” he said.

According to historical data recorded at the Midwestern Regional Climate Center, based in Illinois, the winter of 1994-95 produced a snowfall total of 146.2 inches at Maple City. For the winter of 1995-96, the snow total was 185.5 inches. Snowfalls recorded in Suttons Bay were lower one year, and higher the next.

Feigel said measuring snowfall in Leelanau County can be hit and miss.

“It’s not unusual for me to get two or three inches of snow while if you go less than a half mile east or west of my house there will be no snow. I live in a little snow belt,” he said.

Since the mid 1990s, Feigel has observed snowfall totals go down, a trend reflected at the county Road Commission’s Suttons Bay garage.

A review of snowfall totals over three winters from Oct., 2004 through April, 2007 show an average of 138.2 inches. That is a decrease of 26 percent from the three-season average of Oct. 1994-April 1997 of 186.3 inches. That three-season average includes the record setting snowfall total of 231 inches recorded over the winter of 1995-96.

But snowfall totals for the last three years were off compared to previous decades, too.

The 1984-87 average was 156.7 inches, nearly identical to the 1974-77 average of 157.3 inches. The average from 1964-67 was 155 inches.

Feigel likes to record snowfall — and wishes he had more to record. Feigel and many of his in their favorite winter pastime; snowmobiling.

“When we moved back here, that winter we easily got in over 100 days of riding around here. Last winter, I think we only got in about a week’s worth of riding around here,” he said.

Feigel and company have had to go far afield to find enough good snow to ride. “We used to go to the U.P. a lot, the far western areas. But even that isn’t as good as it used to be,” he said.

One solution: heading west to Yellowstone National Park, where they rent snowmobiles.

Webmaster note: See the October 11, 2007 Leelanau Enterprise for entry form and season snowfall amounts since 1955.