Latest news, weather, high school sports for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

MARQUETTE -- The forced move of the start of the UP 200 from Marquette to Chatham has raised a question in the minds of some locals:  is the Upper Peninsula witnessing a major climate change?

There's hardly any snow on the streets of many towns in the U.P., and the temperatures in mid-winter have frequently drifted up toward 40 degrees. Snowfall totals are actually down close to 50 percent from an average winter, and temperatures are up around five degrees. That's significant.

So what gives?

TV6 meteorolgist Karl Bohnak cautions us not to jump to any conclusions.

"There's no question we're in a warm spell," says Karl, "and we've seen lower snowfalls here in the last few years, but these changes aren't global. In Alaska, for instance, many stations reported the most snow on record in January. Europe's also been in a deep freeze that we're not hearing much about."

National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Zika concurs. "We haven't had much snow here in the last three years, but over the last 12-13 years, we've had some very snowy years in the U.P."

He concedes that nationwide, he and other experts have been surprised by the remarkably mild winter. "On the East coast, in Pennsylvania, some flowers are already blooming! You're just not supposed to see that. In the Rockies, they have a lot less snow than usual, and it's the same in California," Zika states.

So what's next? Will the warm trend continue next winter, and will the dog races here in the U.P. become a thing of the past?

Bohnak doesn't think so. "Actually, the pattern we're seeing now," he explains, "calls for a cooling trend globally over the next couple of decades."

Whether that will translate to more snow and colder temperatures in the Upper Peninsula remains to be seen. Fans of the sled dogs certainly hope so.