Live wave height, wind, and water temperature from reporting NOAA/NDBC stations across Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario
Use the map or station list below to check the latest available NOAA/NDBC readings from Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Each station shows wave height, wind and gusts, water temperature, air temperature, and pressure when that station reports them. Source observations are typically 5 to 30 minutes old, and this page refreshes its server-side feed every 10 minutes.
This dashboard pulls real-time observations from reporting National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) buoys and coastal stations across the Great Lakes basin. The reporting total changes as stations are added, serviced, or seasonally retrieved. Wave height, wind speed and gusts, water temperature, air temperature, and barometric pressure appear wherever each station reports them. The map below renders the current set at once. Tap any buoy on the map to open a detail view with current conditions and a 5-day history of wave height, wind speed, water temperature, air temperature, and pressure. Use the activity filter to color-code stations by safety thresholds for your specific lake activity.
I built this because I could not find a single tool that shows all Great Lakes buoys on one map with multi-parameter filtering. The official NDBC maps are clunky, the lake-by-lake aggregators miss CMAN stations, and the marine weather apps do not let you filter by activity. This is the tool I wanted as a Saginaw Bay sailor, ice fisherman, and freighter watcher. Operationally, the page hits a serverless function I run on this domain that fetches NDBC every ten minutes server-side and aggregates the result, so the page loads with a single request regardless of how many buoys are reporting.
Tap any buoy on the map to view current conditions and 5-day sparkline history. Hover (on desktop) to preview the station name.
Share your location to get a distance-ranked list of all currently reporting stations. Useful for finding the closest reliable wave-height reading before a fishing trip, a paddle, or a launch.
Already know the buoy number? Search the live station list by NOAA/NDBC ID or station name. This is useful when a marine forecast, harbor report, fishing report, or weather app gives you a station number but not the surrounding Great Lakes context.
Sensor availability matters: a station can keep reporting wind or pressure while wave or water-temperature sensors are missing or under maintenance. This dashboard leaves missing fields blank instead of estimating them; the detail view links directly to the official NDBC station page.
I am Chris Izworski, sales engineer at Prepared and former Bay County 911 Director from 2013 to 2022, then Saginaw County 911 Executive Director from 2022 to October 2025. I run a network of Great Lakes data tools from Bay City, Michigan, including the Great Lakes Gazette daily freighter and vessel-movement brief, the Great Lakes Level Intelligence shoreline-property water-level dashboard, the Michigan Trout Report, and the Michigan Birding Report. This buoy dashboard joins the network. If you find it useful, the rest of my Great Lakes work is collected on this site.
I serve on the board of Save Our Shoreline, the Bay City riparian rights organization. I wrote about Great Lakes water levels and the 1986 high-water emergency for several Michigan publications. The buoy dashboard combines my interests in operational marine data, public-safety adjacent infrastructure, and the lakes themselves.
The activity filter applies the following safety thresholds. These are my judgment calls based on standard marine guidance, not Coast Guard or NWS rules. When in doubt, defer to the actual forecast at weather.gov/marine.
Fishing: Wind under 25 knots and waves under 4 feet. The fishing threshold is permissive because most lake fishing happens within sight of shore where small craft can run for harbor quickly.
Kayaking: Wind under 15 knots, waves under 2 feet, water temperature above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Conservative because cold-water immersion in 50-degree water is life-threatening within 30 minutes without a drysuit.
Swimming: Water temperature above 65 degrees Fahrenheit and waves under 3 feet. Below 65 degrees, recreational swimming is uncomfortable and limited to short durations. Above 75 is genuinely warm; Lake Erie hits this regularly, the others rarely.
Sailing: Wind between 8 and 30 knots, waves under 6 feet. Below 8 knots most sailboats cannot make useful way. Above 30 is small-craft advisory territory.
Diving: Waves under 3 feet. Visibility is the real diving constraint, and NDBC stations do not report visibility data consistently. Use the wave threshold as a proxy for surface conditions and check local dive shops for actual visibility.
The station catalog combines open-water Great Lakes NDBC buoys with coastal CMAN stations on harbors, lighthouses, breakwaters, and shore-based towers across all five lakes. Reporting totals change as stations come online, go into maintenance, or are seasonally retrieved. The 45xxx open-water buoys are typically removed between November and December for winter maintenance and redeployed after ice clears in spring. Those open-water buoys are the Great Lakes stations most likely to report wave height consistently.
The data feeds directly from NOAA NDBC at ndbc.noaa.gov. Refresh interval is 10 minutes server-side, observed values are typically 5 to 30 minutes old at the source. Wave height is in meters at the source and converted to feet for display. Wind is in meters per second at the source and converted to knots. Water temperature is in Celsius at the source and converted to Fahrenheit for display. Pressure is in hectopascals (same as millibars).
Planning a trip north? The pre-trip read.
Why are some stations not reporting any data?
Most gaps are seasonal. The 45xxx open-water Great Lakes buoys are typically retrieved between November and December for winter maintenance and not redeployed until ice clears in spring, so through the winter the stations most likely to report wave height show nothing at all. CMAN coastal stations mounted on lighthouses, harbor cribs and breakwaters report year-round, but any of them can go offline for maintenance or a sensor fault. A station showing dashes for every value has not reported in the last few hours and may be down. The dashboard pulls from NOAA NDBC every ten minutes and only displays what the source publishes, so it will not fill a gap with an older reading. The station catalog also changes as NOAA adds, services or retires platforms, which is why the reporting total moves. For a specific station's status, check its page on the NDBC site directly.
Why does the wave height show meters in the popup but feet in conversion?
NDBC publishes wave height in meters. The dashboard displays the conversion to feet (1 meter is approximately 3.28 feet) because feet is the conventional unit on the U.S. Great Lakes. The underlying API endpoint returns metric units for any downstream tool that needs them.
What is the difference between an open-water buoy and a CMAN station?
Open-water buoys are floating platforms anchored in 200 to 1,000 feet of water. They report wave height, wave period, and wave direction in addition to wind and atmospheric data. CMAN stations are coastal automated meteorological stations, typically mounted on lighthouses, harbor cribs, breakwaters, or shore-based towers. They report wind and atmospheric data but rarely wave height (waves at a shoreline are not representative of open-lake conditions).
How accurate is the activity filter?
The thresholds are rules of thumb, not Coast Guard regulations. Fishing flags a station when wind is under 25 knots and waves under 4 feet, a permissive line because most lake fishing happens within sight of shore where a small craft can run for harbor quickly. Kayaking needs wind under 15 knots, waves under 2 feet and water above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Swimming needs water above 65 degrees and waves under 3 feet. Sailing needs wind between 8 and 30 knots with waves under 6 feet, since below 8 knots most sailboats cannot make useful way and above 30 is small-craft advisory territory. Each rule uses the closest buoy as a proxy for the surrounding area, which works well on open lake and less well in protected bays where local wind and waves can differ substantially from the offshore station. Always check the NWS marine forecast before going on the water; the filter is a quick reference, not a substitute for marine safety planning.
Where is the closest buoy to Bay City?
The closest open-water NOAA buoy to Bay City is station 45149, the Lake Huron buoy off Lakeport, about 75 nautical miles east across the lake. For Saginaw Bay itself, the nearest reporting station is the CMAN coastal station at Tawas Point. The distinction matters: open-water 45xxx buoys are the Great Lakes stations most likely to report wave height, while CMAN stations on lighthouses and breakwaters report wind and air data year-round but rarely waves. Tawas Point therefore gives Saginaw Bay a reliable wind reading, and 45149 gives the nearest measured wave height on the open lake, which can differ substantially from conditions inside the bay. Remember too that 45149 is retrieved for the winter and returns after ice clears in spring. The dashboard's location tool ranks every currently reporting station by distance from your position, so from Bay City, Tawas City or Caseville you get an exact ordered list rather than an estimate.