By Richard Manner
Ever wondered goes on in the middle of the lake during a big storm? Or how big the waves can really get?
There are three ways to access this data, which is gathered by buoys far out in the water and transmitted to computers on land.
If you’re looking for buoys on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior go to the Western Great Lakes Marine Data page and find the buoy nearest you and reference its code. For example if you wanted to know the wave height at the Grand Traverse Light House, you could type into the phone GTLM4 (48564 on a number pad) and it would read to you the latest marine observation. That way when you’re out and about you have the code of a station that you want to access.
Dial-A-Buoy is a service that allows everyone to call a toll free number (1-888-701-8992) and access the National Data Buoy System. From there you have access to weather reports around the globe, including the Great Lakes and the eastern and western seaboard.
The system gets a little tricky when using it. If you don’t know the five-digit station identifier code or the latitude and longitude of where you are, you’re kinda’ up the crick without a paddle. But if you happened to know the station code or have a GPS with you, well then you’d be fine.
If not, I’ll let you in on a little secret, Traverse City is located near N44° 45’(latitude) and W85° 35’ (longitude), type that into the phone and you can get the reports from all over Grand Traverse Bay.
Another option: National Data Buoy System, there you’ll find a clickable map of all the regions with observation stations participating in the system.
When you click a region it brings up a map with all the stations in that region, and from there it’s happy hunting as you look for the station nearest you.
Richard Manner, a Land Information Access Association summer intern, is a TC Central graduate currently studying economics at Michigan State.
