Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) is proud to support two real-time monitoring buoys in southern Lake Michigan, one located just north of Michigan City, Indiana and the other near Wilmette Harbor, Illinois. Recently, users have started pitching in with donations to help keep the buoys afloat.
The buoy program started when a Purdue researcher pointed out that there were no real-time data being collected in Lake Michigan’s Indiana waters. A few years later, concerned citizens and sailors pointed to a similar need for the Illinois shoreline. Now, the two IISG buoys are filling information gaps for anglers, sailors, swimmers, and weather professionals who are interested in this part of the lake.
Over the years, buoy users have made phone calls, emails, and interactions through Twitter and Facebook to share that the buoys are valued and needed. We at Sea Grant have enjoyed hearing how our fans use buoy information. All told, lake enthusiasts are checking our real-time buoy data nearly 30,000 times per year!
Putting a buoy in the water, year after year, requires many things to happen. Weather conditions, equipment, people, and technical services have to come together perfectly to keep the buoys operational. This program would be impossible without sufficient funding.
Sea Grant’s buoy managers, Carolyn Foley and Jay Beugly, try to support the buoys with grants, but those funds can be hard to come by. When the unexpected happens, like a power-generating solar panel comes loose, or it takes three trips to remove a hook found tangled in wires at a depth of 30 feet, we burn through our funds pretty quickly.
IISG is constantly on the lookout for partnerships to help keep the buoys afloat, but you can also make a donation. The funds raised will go directly toward the buoy program, supporting data charges, travel costs, repairs, and upgrades. Already, folks are stepping up and donating to keep the buoys operational.
We love providing the buoy data as a service to everyone and helping families stay safe during these summer days. Please join your fellow buoy fans and consider donating today!
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue University Extension.
The sun has set—literally, see above video—on another season for our Two Yellow Buoys anchored in Lake Michigan. Rest assured, they will be well-cared-for and back in action in the spring of 2017.
But if you can’t wait until next year to get your buoy fix, check #2YBHiatus on Twitter where there will be lots of data, discovery, and discussion!
1. The buoys are too delicate to withstand the Lake Michigan winter.
The main reason to take the buoys out is that the lake ices over in the winter and the delicate instruments that take measurements also need to be cleaned and maintained to be sure we can keep transmitting the best data possible.
2. It is much easier to retrieve the buoys at the end of the year than to put them out in the springtime. You usually need one person to captain the boat and 4-5 people to help pull up the ballast weights and stop the buoy from bouncing against the boat. Although this year, the buoys were giving our scientists a little trouble. Don’t worry, though. Everyone is safe and sound on dry land!
3. The buoys are usually stored at the Purdue University West Lafayette campus in the civil engineering building.
Sometimes they are stored at LimnoTech’s headquarters, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The buoys tend to move around during the winter, especially if they need upgrades. So keep your eye out for buoys on trailers when you’re travelling down I-65 or I-94.
4. Every year scientists have to remove thousands of quagga mussels attached to the buoys.
Quagga mussel veligers—a mollusk larval stage—floating around Lake Michigan are always looking for hard structures to attach to. Though some of the surfaces on the buoys are smooth enough to stop the quaggas from attaching, they always manage to find their way into nooks and crannies. We carefully inspect the buoys before leaving the lakeside and remove anything we see, either manually or with help from a hose.
5. The buoys receive thorough maintenance.
The main hulls get washed off and all of the sensors are removed and cleaned. Depending on the sensor, this may mean an acid wash or just a good wipe down. One year, we had to replace a solar panel that had completely fallen off, so we’re always double-checking that everything is where it’s meant to be.
6. The buoys stop generating data, but all that’s been collected is ready and available online.
The IISG buoy data pages—dashboards and graphs—are not active when the buoys are not in the water. Historic data can always be found via the National Data Buoy Center (Michigan City 45170 , Wilmette 45174 ).
People who want to use the data should pay attention to notes like “Data have not been quality-checked.” Information marked with that tag may contain weird, fluke readings—like 100-foot waves! We try to do a quality check for the whole year of data within a few months of retrieving the buoy. People are also always welcome to email us to ask questions about the data.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant’s Wilmette buoy (45174) has been pitted against the City of Cleveland’s Cleveland Crib buoy (45176) in the World Series of Buoy Data. The match-up is playing out on Twitter. It’s a best of seven series and will last up to seven days. Questions are posted in the morning and answers are posted in the afternoon. After three days of competition, Wilmette is in the lead 2-1, winning both the highest wave and strongest wind gust recorded between July 1 and October 24 of this year. Cleveland saw the warmest water temperature.
This story originally appeared on the Big Ten Network’s website, btn.com.
Lake Michigan contains approximately six quadrillion gallons of water. Monitoring the weather and lake conditions isn’t just a big job, it’s a potentially dangerous one for humans.
Luckily, we have buoys for that. Specifically, number 45170 located off the coast of Michigan City, Indiana and 45174, located in the waters off Wilmette, Illinois. The two markers are run by the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant College Program and staffed by researchers and specialists from Purdue University and the University of Illinois.
Not content to merely send real-time data about wind speed, lake temperatures and wave height to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help fishermen and beachgoers alike determine the best day to hit the water, the two buoys also run their own Twitter account, @TwoYellowBuoys, where they send out information about the lake and photos.
Armed with a buoy-to-English dictionary, BTN.com’s LiveBIG staff talked with the two buoys about conservation issues, their Big Ten loyalties and how they spend the off-season.
BTN LiveBIG: You spent the entire summer out on the lake. That sounds like a dream job.
Michigan City: Some days are definitely better than others, but if you don’t mind occasional rain and high winds it’s great.
Wilmette: And luckily we don’t get seasick!
BTN LiveBIG: What are you out there to do?
Michigan City: We’re weather buoys, so we’re covered in sensors that measure things like wind speed, wave height, and water temperature. We take readings all the time but what gets logged is either the average or the maximum of a given variable over the past 10 minutes.
Wilmette: Except [the] webcams.
Michigan City: Yeah, yeah, for those of us who have webcams, those images or videos are usually sent out once per hour.
BTN LiveBIG: So you don’t both have webcams?
Wilmette: Nope. I have one but Michigan City doesn’t.
Michigan City: But I have a chain of temperature sensors that runs from the surface to the bottom of the lake. Which is also pretty darn cool. Anglers love me because I help them determine when and where to fish different species, like salmon or perch.
BTN LiveBIG: How do people get access to your data?
Michigan City: Our data are transmitted to the main Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant website, NOAA’s National Data Buoy Center, GreatLakesBuoys.org, and the Great Lakes Observing System Data Portal. Other websites sometimes pick up a couple of variables here and there, and you can always email our handlers to get copies of old data.
BTN LiveBIG: Are you out on the lake all year? What happens in the winter?
Wilmette: Oh no. We’re tough, but not that tough.
Michigan City: In October or November, we get pulled in for the winter. People have to clean us off (quagga mussels REALLY like us), take care of our sensors and make repairs, sometimes make upgrades, whatever’s needed. It’s a nice vacation.
BTN LiveBIG: What was the most extreme weather pattern you’ve seen this year?
BTN LiveBIG: What’s the most important conservation issue facing the Great Lakes?
Michigan City: That depends on who you ask and where you are. A lot of people are worried about aquatic invasive species and habitat loss, mainly because they cause big changes in the system.
Wilmette: Don’t forget nutrients!
Michigan City: Yes, nutrients can exacerbate some issues, like the harmful algal blooms that happen in some parts of the Great Lakes. We actually have buddies over in Lake Erie who help monitor those.
BTN LiveBIG: Do you ever wish you could take a selfie?
Wilmette: First we’d need arms. We are pretty, though.
Michigan City: But not as pretty as Lake Michigan.
BTN LiveBIG: You’re a part of the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant program. For those that don’t know, what is that group’s purpose?
Michigan City: Well, Sea Grant is actually a network of 33 programs that extend from Alaska to Puerto Rico and Hawaii to Maine—even Guam! Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant focuses on using the latest science to help people in southern Lake Michigan and across the Great Lakes solve natural resource problems in sustainable ways.
Wilmette: So we’re basically rock stars, because we’re bringing the data that drives the science.
BTN LiveBIG: This is a joint effort with the University of Illinois and Purdue. How did that come about?
Michigan City: The partnership between the University of Illinois and Purdue University goes way back to the early 1980s. There’s a great story about it here.
Wilmette: And while our main squeezes are at Purdue and the U of I, we’re also supported by awesome people at NOAA, LimnoTech, Inc., the National Weather Service, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, the Great Lakes Observing System, and many local shop owners or users of our data.
BTN LiveBIG: Wilmette Buoy, do you tend to root for U of I? Are you a loyal Purdue fan, Michigan City?
Michigan City: I am a Boilermaker through and through.
Wilmette: It’s hard for me. Both Purdue and the U of I have done me good turns, but Northwestern is so close. I guess I’m a fair weather fan.
BTN LiveBIG: I see what you did there. What’s next for you? Do you think you’ll eventually work in an ocean or are you happy with the Great Lakes?
Wilmette: We’re made especially for the Great Lakes, so we’ll probably never see work in the ocean. But there are good buoys doing good work all over the world.
Thanks to Carolyn Foley, assistant research coordinator for the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, for speaking on behalf of her buoy colleagues. Remember, for updates and insights about life on Lake Michigan, follow @TwoYellowBuoys on Twitter.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
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.
“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.”
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.”
The Wilmette buoy returned to Lake Michigan earlier this week. But a few days before it departed, several of its biggest admirers stopped by to meet it at Lloyd Park in Winnetka, Illinois.
Wil, as some of the IISG scientists call it, lay prone in the parking lot withstanding the blustery winds and cold temperatures. The ugly weather didn’t stop the 10 or so Chicago-area sailors from coming to the open house, leaning in close and examining the body of the machine they’ve come to rely on after only one season.
One remarked at how much smaller it was than he thought. Others stood and posed with it for pictures.
It’s hard not to anthropomorphize the buoy. Once in the water, the weather and lake condition data and images it provides are like sage advice coming from a reliable friend.
“I’m with the Glencoe Boat Club and we were excited when it was put in,” Eric Brislawn of Buffalo Grove, Illinois said. “We’ve been watching data on it all summer and using it. We—the boaters, the sailors up here—had nothing like this anywhere nearby…so this really filled a nice gap for weather information.”
The buoy might not have made it in the water without the help of Laurie Morse of Glencoe, Illinois, who along with Purdue University, helped secure a grant to fund it.
“We have already noticed since it’s been in the water since 2015 that it’s made a difference in the quality of our marine forecast and it’s really important to all us recreational boaters,” said Morse, who was with her husband at the open house.
“Well, we look for it in the water,” Morse remarked. “I’ve never been successful in finding it on the lake, but this is the first time I’ve seen the buoy. So this is very exciting.”
Jay Beugly, IISG aquatic ecology specialist, and scientists Ed Verhamme and John Bratton from LimnoTech, organized the open house and were on hand to talk about all the nearshore environmental-sensing this bright yellow, 610-pound buoy is capable of.
“We were happy that people came with lots of questions. Some didn’t know much about it. Others followed it closely last year,” said Beugly. “This is the first full season that this buoy will be deployed, and we want people to know that it’s out there. We were excited to be able to stand next to the buoy while it’s out of the water and talk to folks and see how we might improve their experience.”
This has been a good year for Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. Working with our many partners, big projects reached their culmination, in some cases providing researchers and decision makers new ways to access data. And the spotlight was turned on Lake Michigan for research and education. Here are10 important stories from 2015.
The year started with big research news that southern Lake Michigan has high concentrations of plastic microfibers, which are likely from clothing that sheds in the wash. This news was picked up by media outlets around the world, including the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Guardian, and the Chicago Tribune.
2015 saw the release of the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy, which laid out a plan to reduce the flow of nutrients down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. This strategy was developed with input from a range of stakeholders, including government agencies and agricultural producers.
Be a Hero is now the primary invasive species awareness campaign in Illinois. Recreational water users have heard this message, but now the campaign provides easy tips to help water gardeners, teachers, and aquarium hobbyists curb the spread of aquatic invaders. Plus, Be a Hero provides guidance to hunters, campers, and hikers to prevent the spread of species that threaten habitat on land.
The Grand Calumet River in Indiana just keeps getting better. Another section of this long polluted waterway has been cleaned up through Great Lakes Legacy Act funding and that of many local and state partners. Remediation of the Kennedy to Cline Avenues section led to the removal of 1.1 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment.
Twice this year, it was Lake Michigan’s turn for ongoing projects that rotate yearly around the Great Lakes. First, the Lake Michigan Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative (CSMI) brought together agencies and scientists to study the nearshore environment, which ultimately will help inform management decisions. CSMI is part of a larger binational effort to advance Great Lakes monitoring and research.
Second, this was the year for the Shipboard Science Workshop on Lake Michigan, in which 15 teachers spent a week aboard the U.S. EPA R/V Lake Guardian working with researchers and learning about Great Lakes science.
IISG has developed new tools to help scientists enhance their research and help decision makers, and others make informed choices. Great Lakes Monitoring is a web application that provides the means for environmental data from across the Great Lakes region to be just a click away.
For communities looking to set water prices smartly, the Northeast Illinois Water and Wastewater Rates Dashboard allows them to compare rates with communities in the region that have similar characteristics. Setting the right price for water is the first step in managing water supplies sustainably.
In our latest issue of The Helm, we report on a tool under development for critical facilities in Cook County to reduce flooding impacts. Through answering a series of questions, facilities managers can assess how the building might be vulnerable to flood damage, and how this risk can be addressed.
Finally, IISG installed a second buoy in the waters of Lake Michigan. This one is off the shores of Wilmette, Illinois, joining the first one in the Indiana waters near Michigan City. These buoys provide key information to the National Weather Service, researchers, boaters, anglers, and beach goers alike.
As we look forward to 2016, we thank partners, stakeholders, and many others that we worked with and supported to achieve noteworthy goals.
Every year as winter approaches, the Michigan City and Wilmette buoys are taken out of Lake Michigan. So we were wondering, what happens to them? Where do they go? The best people to tell us about the off-season lives of the buoys are the individuals who work the closest with them — IISG Assistant Research Coordinator Carolyn Foley and Aquatic Ecology Specialist Jay Beugly. Here’s what they had to say.
Why do we need to take the buoy out? Why can’t it stay in all year? The main reason to take the buoy out is that the lake ices over in the winter. Weather conditions when there is not ice can also get very, very rough — rougher than what the buoy is meant to withstand (though we’re always trying to make things stronger and more rugged). The delicate instruments that take measurements also need to be cleaned and maintained to be sure we can keep transmitting the best data possible.
Is it hard to get it out? It must weigh a lot! How many people does it take? It is much easier to retrieve the buoy at the end of the year than to put it out in the springtime. You usually need one person to captain the boat and 4-5 people to help pull up the ballast weights and stop the buoy from bouncing against the boat.
Where does the buoy go once it’s out? A warehouse? A garage? The buoys are usually stored at the Purdue University West Lafayette campus, in the Civil Engineering building. Sometimes they are stored at LimnoTech’s headquarters, in Ann Arbor, MI. The buoys tend to move around during the winter, especially if they need upgrades. So keep your eye out for buoys on trailers when you’re travelling down I-65 or I-94.
Aquatic species attach easily and quickly to things in the water. Has that ever happened to any of the buoys? What did you do? Every year! Quagga mussel veligers floating around Lake Michigan are always looking for hard structures to attach to, and even if we only put the buoy out for one month, we find young quaggas that have attached themselves. Though some of the surfaces on the buoy are smooth enough to stop the quaggas from attaching, they always manage to find their way into nooks and crannies. We carefully inspect the buoy before leaving the lakeside and remove anything we see, either manually or with help from a hose.
Does the buoy get a tune-up? Like a thorough wash-down? A paintjob? The main hull gets cleaned off and all of the sensors are removed and cleaned. Depending on the sensor, this may mean an acid wash or just a good wipe down. One year we had to replace a solar panel that had completely fallen off, so we’re always double-checking that everything is where it’s meant to be.
What happens to the buoy website? Is all the archival data still available? The IISG buoy data websites go offline while the buoys are not in the water, but the main IISG buoy pages are still active. Historic data can always be found at the NDBC page (buoys 45170 and 45174, respectively), and at greatlakesbuoys.org. People who want to use the data should pay attention to notes like “Data have not been quality-checked” – if the data haven’t been quality-checked, they may contain really weird, fluke readings (like the 100-foot wave that the Michigan City wave height sensor recorded in 2014). We try to quality check the whole year of data within a few months of retrieving the buoy. People are also always welcome to email us to ask questions about the data.
Our lawns are greening up just in time for #EarthDay2024. 🌎 The @ILINSeaGrant Lawn to Lake Program has advice for a healthy lawn that minimizes polluted runoff. Find these #NaturalLawnCare tips at @ILextension @ILEPA @ILAgriculture
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