North Shore Lake Superior

Strip Maps and 'Snow Rules!' grids

North Shore 'strip map'

Approximate location information is available on the north shore 'strip map'. To initially display location information click in map. UTM(zone 15), Lat/Long, township/range/section, 'north shore' location, and picture locations are displayed next to a 'cursor' placed where the image was clicked. Arbitrary coordinates may be filled into the coordinate values text boxes and the 'upd' button on the same line pressed to convert to the other coordinate systems and reposition the 'cursor'. An error of one section is possible in T-R-S and will be most likely for the easternmost points.

Maps displayable at top of this page are (switch with 'radio buttons'):

'topo': original 1:100k USGS topo
'topoCUL': topo minus forest and contours
'DEM': USGS 1-sec DEM
'complete': topoCul + DEM + shape files + misc
'complete w/SP': 'complete' plus state parks and Hwy 61 mileposts
'needObs': complete 'highlighted' where new observers are wanted
'needObsSel': needObs overlaid by 'cell filled' shading

Note that the locations of Hwy 61 mileposts in the 'complete w/SP' map are approximate. They are shown as red-ringed yellow circles. Every 10th mile is labeled with the '10's digits of the mile post. In the sample at left the circle with '3' is milepost 30 while the next one below the word 'Silver' is milepost 31.

The 'needObs' maps were obscured in places where the combination of elevation and distance from Lake Superior was already represented by a snow observer in the 2003-04 season. The shaded 'cells' in the 'needObsSel' version additionally show which project 'cells' actually contain those 2003-04 observers. So, the areas with both saturated color and unobscured by cell shading are places where an observer is most wanted. However, any observer at a location where either the cell is not shaded OR the map is not 'whited out' could receive observing equipment from the Snow Rules! project.

Please note that the process of selecting which areas should be 'whited out' is an experimental technique. The intent is to 'fill in' observers where particular combinations of elevation and distance from Lake Superior are not currently being observed. Revised versions of the 'needObs' maps may be released as new selection algorithms are developed.

The project grid design

The project was originally designed to try to find a snow observer in each of 125 'observation cells'. Each cell is 10km wide along the shore and number 1 to 25 from Duluth to the Canadian border. Away from the shore the cells are lettered 'A' through 'E'. The cell at the shore ('A') is everything from .5km 'north' of highway 61 to the shore and into the lake. The other widths are also 'away' from the shore and have boundaries that parallel Highway 61. 'B' is .5 to 2.5km, 'C' is 2.5 to 6.0km, 'D' is 6 to 12km, and 'E' is 12 to 24km.

Calculation of the 'strip maps'

The coordinates of the north shore of Lake Superior were fit to a straight line plus a Gaussian 'bell curve' (a total of 5 coefficients). That very smooth representation was used as the 'straight edge' in preparing a 'strip map' of the entire north shore. A somewhat less smoothed version of the shore was used to form a series of 4 more detailed 'near shore' maps from 1:24k topo maps. (The lesser smoothing allows more land detail and somewhat less lake to be shown given for a given graphic height.) All such 'linearized shore' maps can be viewed/scrolled either directly or via links in this document.

Some features have been added to the maps.

Snow observation cells (defined for Coastal Program grant for 'Enhanced Snow and Precipitation Monitoring within Minnesota Portions of Watersheds Draining to Lake Superior', aka 'Snow Rules!') are shown in white (pink on 'complete' series) . The cells (as described above) have vertical boundaries every 10 km along the shore and parallel to and .5, 2.5, 6, 12, and 24 km away from Highway 61. Each 'A' cell is labeled in the lower left corner with the 'along shore' cell number next to the popular name for the project, 'SCO Snow Rules!'.
The Superior Hiking Trail is show as a magenta line (2003 GPSed version is on 'complete' and 'Tettegoughe area' maps only)
Grants-in-aid snowmobile trails are shown in yellow
The North Shore Trail is shown in orange.

From the 1:100k USGS topo maps:

(see map at top of this page)

From 1:24k USGS topo maps (no JavaScript location support) a set 4-gif scrollable maps can be viewed. The component .gifs cover the regions:

Duluth to Castle Danger
Castle Danger to nr. Taconite Harbor
Taconite Harbor to Grand Marais
near Grand Marais to Canadian border

A 'Tettegouche area' 24k map is available for the area from East Beaver Bay to Kennedy Creek (includes Silver bay, Bean and Bear Lakes, Lax Lake, Tettegouche State Park, and Wolf Ridge). That map is similar to the 'complete' 100k maps but retains much of the topo contour information. The map is shaped to print nicely on 11x17 paper. It has a larger amount of error in placement of shape file data than the 100k series.

The subdirectory 'print' contains versions which were used for printing the 'complete' version on an Epson 9000 printer.

Snow Rules! main page
State Climatology Office, DNR - Waters, 2004
Jim Zandlo, State Climatologist for Minnesota
2005/6/1