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Golden Snowball Challenge: Maitland, Huttner with the win

Posted at 5:27 PM on February 9, 2010 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Weather

I bought one of those reflective snow sticks this year, part of my civic duty to help the snowplow operators see where the side of the road ends and the News Cut winter estate begins.

Alas, it's about to be swallowed by the flotsam of winter.

There's no place left to put the snow.

Here are the preliminary results of this round of the Golden Snowball Challenge (details here). We have a National Weather Service advisory that a trained spotter measured 8.4" at Como Park. And the NWS reports a cooperative weather observer reports 7.7 at the U of M St. Paul campus. The 7.7" total was reported at 2:30 this afternoon, so preliminarily, I'm using that as the official measurement.

These numbers may well be challenged, but for now here are the results:

Meteorologist	Range	Average	Diff	Points
Erik Maitland (KMSP)	5-10	7.5	-0.2	9
Paul Huttner (MPR)	5-10	7.5	-0.2	9
Chikage Windler (KSTP)	5-11	8	0.3	8
National Weather Service	6-10	8	0.3	8
Mike Fairbourne (WCCO)	6-8	7	-0.7	7
Craig Edwards	6	6	-1.7	-5
Ron Trenda (WCCO)	9-13	11	3.3	-8
Sven Sundgaard (KARE)	3-6	4.5	-3.2	-8
Ian Leonard (KMSP)	4-6	5	-2.7	-8

And the updated season standings (again, these are prelimianry):

Meteorologist	Rounds	Total Points	Average
Patrick Hammer (KSTP)	3	25	8.3
Chikage Windler (KSTP)	2	15	7.5
Mike Fairbourne (WCCO)	2	14	7.0
Paul Huttner (MPR)	5	26	5.2
Erik Maitland (KMSP)	2	9	4.5
Jonathan Yuhas (KARE)	2	7	3.5
National Weather Service	5	12	2.4
Paul Douglas (MinnPost)	3	1	0.3
Sven Sundgaard (KARE)	2	0	0.0
Chris Shaffer (WCCO)	2	-2	-1.0
Don Moldenhauer (BMTN)	1	-5	-5.0
Belinda Jensen (KARE)	1	-5	-5.0
Mike Augustyniak (WCCO)	2	-10	-5.0
Dave Dahl (KSTP)	2	-10	-5.0
Keith Marler (KMSP)	3	-18	-6.0
Ron Trenda (WCCO)	2	-13	-6.5
Craig Edwards (MPR)	2	-15	-7.5
Ian Leonard (KMSP)	3	-24	-8.0

Craig Edwards again placed first in the senior division.

Comments (4)

Maybe Huffington Post and Fox will link to this one, too? I think we need to connect snow to global warming for some flame bait!

Posted by Matt | February 9, 2010 8:38 PM

I'm going to send you a picture of my 6 foot high snow stick which is now covered by, oh, about 3 inches of snow. (We have had but one paltry snow storm all winter here in Vermont.) You can collect these, Bob, and start posting "Snow Stick Data" visuals. Maybe it can become a new source of data to be analyzed by NOAA. Can't possibly muck up global warming science more than it's already mucked.

Posted by Wendy S Collins | February 10, 2010 10:27 AM

I'm honored! Especially as I face such a fine and talented pool of fellow mets. Thing is, in my former market we used to forecast a specific amount for the city - it was a much smaller area - and based our accuracy on that one amount. Since moving back to the Twin Cities I realize that snow forecasts here are really only good when made as a range, not a single amount. Within the metro you have about 100 different towns that can have 300 different amounts. I hope that could be worked into the scoring but I know it's tough and you have to draw the line somewhere. I thought in my mind the airport total would be 7.2" but as usual the airport measurement came up short whereas 7.2 anywhere else would have been a sound call. All I know is that I haven't seen snow piles as high as the ones that are along my driveway now since I was a kid in Bloomington back in those fierce winters of the '70s!!! Thanks for the contest - it's fun to watch! -EM

Posted by Erik Maitland | February 11, 2010 9:12 AM

Bob, I love this contest, but "Golden Snowball" is just too close to "Yellow Snow" for me.

Posted by teej | February 12, 2010 12:53 PM