First, a Big Thank You Cherie B. for your donation.  As always I deeply appreciate you taking the time
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Updated 1/1/2015 7 PM – Congrats to Grand Rapids, Michigan for ending 2014 as the King of the Snow Mountain and starting the new year, 2015 with the lead

Grand Rapids has been quiet just like most of the other cities lately but when they see another city trying to sneak up on them they find a way to get Mother Nature to sneeze over them and give them just enough snow to stay in the lead. I thought Buffalo was going to take the top spot but Grand Rapids managed to get just enough snowflakes. The same pretty much goes for Buffalo and Erie, Pa protecting their spots on the snow mountain. They both keep getting just enough to fend off any snowball attacks. Loving how close the race is so far and some of the lower cities are also sneaking up a little at a time. Stay Tuned
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I just wanted to say Thanks to all of you, both new to the snow site and to those of you who visit our fun snow contest season after season. Obviously if it wasn’t for you the National Snowiest Big City Contest wouldn’t be any fun. I would also like to Thank the media who continues to have fun with the snow contest year after year and help spread the word around about it. A Big Thanks to All of you for the fun, the comments, the emails and the donations. It keeps it fun and helps pass the winter months by.

We have also had several donations to the snow site through the years that help out a lot with expenses and they also offset the time that is put into the website. So far this season I figure close to 250 hours have been put into keeping the site updated. It does pull me away from my livelihood websites a little but believe me it’s a nice break and something I really love doing BTW and love seeing the new snow stats just as much as most of you do. Words can’t express how much I appreciate those of you for taking the time to make donations to the site. No this isn’t a solicitation, just a big Thanks

Below are a few statistic that I found interesting in watching the National snow site grow. Keep in mind that these stats are for the entire year and not for the snow seasons.  Also keep in mind that this was one of the slowest Decembers in awhile and if it was like last season we may have hit close to a quarter of a million visitors this year

Year          Unique Visitors            Total Visitors        Visitors Page Views
—–               —————                 ———–                  ——————–
2011                13,384                        20,101                      58,758
2012                51,916                        78,722                    227,728
2013              214,338                      327,234                    644,188
2014              379,395                      634,557               1,427,4944

The media has also played a Huge part in getting word out to people that have never even heard of the national snow contest, The Golden Snow Globe so a Big Thanks to all of you. There are too many to name (OK, Remember ) but there have been many articles since the snowiest big city in the US contest started back in the 2009 – 2010 season. Some of the papers and sites that come to mind are Syracuse.com and the Post Standard in Syracuse, The media from both Erie and Buffalo, Erie, Pa Life on Facebook, cnycentral.com and Mike Brookins, The Washington Post, USA Today and many others. A few of the radio stations including WMCE.FM, 88.5 in Erie thanks to Captain Dan Geary and that wild and crazy guy in Billings, Montana on The Big J Show There are so many more that I will have to look up and Thanks.

The last I looked the most visitors last year (season) came from Erie, Pa and I am happy that a lot of you from Erie and posted comments and I was able to make some online friends from Erie and all across the country Of course something about Erie holding the lead and winning last season could have something to do with that stat One thing that I noticed last month if the stats were right was that The Golden Snow Globe website was ranked in the top 1000 websites visited by residents of Erie, Pa. I think with something like over half a billion sites online that was pretty cool and WTG Erie

Syracuse was second in the amount of visitors that visited the National Snow site thanks to the articles put out by Sean Kirst, Glenn Coin from Syracuse.com and the Post and also a big thanks to CNYCentral.com in Syracuse. I believe my good friends to the west of me Buffalo had the third most visitors to the site. Tens of thousand of visitors from across the United States and also from service people stationed in other countries checking to see how their home towns are doing in the winter.

I’ll be tweaking this post to add more of the media that have helped make this a fun, successful site in the near future…

Thanks again everyone and Have a Super Happy New Year which is hopefully filled with plenty of snow