Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant’s two Lake Michigan real-time monitoring buoys know that they’re popular. And if you follow the Twitter account, @TwoYellowBuoys, they’ll tell you so.

Part of this popularity may be because the buoys are festive. In addition to decking themselves out for holidays.

4th of July

#Happy4th to all you #LakeMichigan lovers!!! pic.twitter.com/UgQ8QsAoRA

— Two Yellow Buoys (@TwoYellowBuoys) July 4, 2017

#PrinceDay

We buoys always party like it’s 1999. #PrinceDay pic.twitter.com/LUwRpfEPsw

— Two Yellow Buoys (@TwoYellowBuoys) June 7, 2017

Alternatives to Easter egg hunts.

Who needs eggs when you can play Find-The-Buoys-Going-To-The-Lake? Buoys all over the interstates these days. But not us. Yet. pic.twitter.com/qdvD88XSFF

— Two Yellow Buoys (@TwoYellowBuoys) April 13, 2017

Or maybe it’s because the buoys are clearly in love with science so they share interesting data patterns.

#dataoftheday #LakeMichigan thermocline around 40 ft near @MichCityLaPorte on #June24. About 67 F at surface. https://t.co/JFxg75UHGr pic.twitter.com/65IWSXNHwC

— Two Yellow Buoys (@TwoYellowBuoys) June 24, 2017

#dataoftheday 10-20 knot winds from the west mean 1 ft waves near @ETownLakeFront, 2-3 ft (or higher) near @MichCityLaPorte. Stay safe! pic.twitter.com/RkVyTfAk98

— Two Yellow Buoys (@TwoYellowBuoys) June 26, 2017

Here they introduce themselves to Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

Hi @BillNye! We’re real-time buoys collecting #LakeMichigan data. We’re kind of a big deal (in our sweet lab coats). #BillMeetScienceTwitter pic.twitter.com/4LIaZUR69M

— Two Yellow Buoys (@TwoYellowBuoys) May 23, 2017

The buoys’ hard work informing people about conditions in southern Lake Michigan was recognized with an APEX Award of Excellence for Social Media – Sites. This is the second IISG project to win a 2017 APEX Award. The buoys are proud to work alongside their Sea Grant colleagues, serving the people who live and recreate in southern Lake Michigan.

*The buoys would like to thank IISG Assistant Research Coordinator Carolyn Foley for managing their Twitter account. They also blame Carolyn for any mistakes made, because they’re buoys. It’s difficult to Tweet when you don’t have arms.

If you love the buoys, let them know!

The first thing IISG Assistant Research Coordinator Carolyn Foley does each morning is feed her kids. Then, while toast is toasting or oatmeal is warming up, she checks the IISG real-time buoys.

“Jayson Beugly, Angela Archer, and I all monitor the buoys to make sure they’re transmitting OK,” Foley said. “But I also look for cool things that are being captured.”

Foley shares these “cool things” via the @TwoYellowBuoys Twitter feed that was conceived during a 2015 IISG staff meeting.

“Jay and I were sitting next to each other during a talk about engaging with social media,” Foley recalled. “He turned to me and said, ‘We should make a Twitter account for the buoys.’ And we both began to laugh.”

Carolyn admits she didn’t know much about Twitter before starting @TwoYellowBuoys, but it seemed like a great platform for communicating the graphs and images constantly generated by the buoys.

“I think visually, and my favorite part of writing scientific manuscripts is putting together graphs in order to tell a story. I hope that seeing how the data illustrate trends and phenomena helps people better understand how scientists use the data to answer complex questions,” said Foley.

#dataoftheday Winds at the #WilmetteBuoy and #MichiganCityBuoy. Note different scales for speed and gust. Yowza! pic.twitter.com/x9v8mbvhcs

— Two Yellow Buoys (@TwoYellowBuoys) July 22, 2016

“And it doesn’t hurt that looking at the webcam pictures reminds me why I do what I do, especially when I haven’t been able to get near the water lately.”

A week’s-worth of last captures of the day by the #WilmetteBuoy webcam. https://t.co/hVFQ6wwX6u #GreatLakes pic.twitter.com/gF99uJ7wIw

— Two Yellow Buoys (@TwoYellowBuoys) June 16, 2016

IISG owns and operates two nearshore buoys in Lake Michigan, one in Michigan City, Indiana and another in Willmette, Illinois. The weather buoys serve a variety of audiences, from the National Weather Service to recreational water users. Data from the buoys, including information on water temperature, wind speed, wave height, solar radiation, and more, is transmitted every 10 minutes.

Foley is especially partial to posting thermocline data on Twitter because she knows anglers make decisions based on  water temperature.

The buoy dashboards provide this data in both numerical and graphical form, and users can even access historic data. In addition, webcam images are captured every hour during daylight hours and shared online.

Using @TwoYellowBuoys, Foley has featured local and Lake Michigan-wide comparisons of water temperatures, air temperatures, wave heights, wind speeds, and more. She also pulls together images from the webcams atop the buoys to share with followers.

“It’s not up to us to predict what’s going to happen—the National Weather Service and others use the data for that purpose,” said Foley.

“But to be able to visualize what has happened and link it to real things that people have experienced, like storms or temperature shifts, is really fun and hopefully neat for people to see and understand.”

Carolyn Foley and Abigail Bobrow also contributed to the story. Joel Davenport created the illustrations.

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.