Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

Today's links have a snowy theme, featuring the Heikki Lunta Snow Dance Song. I make a point to sing it every time there's a chance for a storm. Also included are updates of snow maps, a bit more sledding information and more.

Heikki Lunta Snow Dance Song

In 1970, the Range Snowmobile Club in Atlantic Mine in Michigan's Upper Peninsula was worried that it would not have enough snow for its annual December snowmobile race. It bought an advertisement on Hancock's WMPL radio, and station employee David Riutta wrote the Heikki Lunta Snow Dance Song to run on air to ask for snow.

Here it is, ladies and gentlemen! The original “Heikki Lunta Snow Dance Song!”

Now I’ll sing my song
To make the snow come down
And I’ll do my snow dance
Whoops! I almost lost my pants
I’ll holler and yell,
And really give it---

It’s Heikki’s snow dance song,
Heikki’s snow dance song

Yoopers have been singing this song ever since, in many variations. Hilary Virtanen put together a complete history of the now legendary Heikki Lunta as her master’s degree thesis project for Indiana University’s Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology in Bloomington, Ind., based on interviews she did with musicians and natives of the Upper Peninsula who have made Heikki Lunta a kind of modern-day Finnish snow god.

Sledding

For the last big snow, I wrote a sledding hills roundup with details on hills around the area. I have a few things to add that came in since. Watch out for the big jump in Veteran's Park. As AnnArbor.com photographer Lon Horwedel found out, landing wrong can hurt. And watch out for the utility boxes at the bottom of the hills at Ypsilanti's Riverside Park, for as Mark Maynard found out, hitting one can hurt. Readers pointed out the sledding in Mill Pond Park in Saline as another destination.

Let's be careful out there.

Snow maps

Three sets of snow maps to recommend as you watch the snow come in, all from NOHRSC, the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center. Upcoming snowfall maps and predictions are on their snowfall forecasts page, which show in map form the probability of a big snowstorm. Three dimensional visualizations viewable in Google Earth are available as well. Once the storm is over, use the National Snow Analysis maps to see how big the storm was, track the depth of the snow pack, and watch the snow melt.

Snow webcams

Two campus webcams show current conditions. The North Quad webcam shows progress on completion of that new University classroom and dormitory on East Washington St. A bit further east is the Diag webcam showing a view from the Shapiro Library.

Getting out of town

If you are flying out of town - and why would you want to ever do that? - you can get current airport delays for DTW from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Heikki Lunta Go Away

From the Heikki Lunta Timeline, 1970:

After the release of the “Heikki Lunta Snow Dance Song,” the snow continues to fall and fall and fall. Some locals wonder if Heikki Lunta had anything to do with the weather. Some get mildly hostile to WMPL employees: one man hints that Riutta’s character is a result of witchcraft or bad magic, and Riutta’s coworker Bob Olsen said in a 1987 interview that, “It was getting dangerous for Heikki and Dave…people started throwing rocks at them…well, not really rocks, but snowballs filled with rocks.” It was decided that he should write a follow-up song. Using the same tune as the first song, “Heikki Lunta, Go Away” is an apology to the community for the havoc the character had caused. Heikki promises to stop dancing until he is needed again.

Please don't throw rocks at me.

Edward Vielmetti grew up in the Upper Peninsula, where there's more snow than there is here. Find him singing to himself, buried in a drift along Packard Street waiting for the bus, or contact him at 734-330-2465.