Michigan weather today: Beautiful Friday but drought area is growing.
A new weather buoy gathering a trove of information about Lake Superior’s wave action is meant to give researchers lots of data to work with, all the while helping to keep anglers and mariners safer on the water.
The hope is the weather buoy will not only collect data for scientists who study the Great Lakes, but that it will give fishermen and mariners more accurate weather information before they make the long trip out into Lake Superior.
The shallow reef topped by the lighthouse sits 45 miles due north of Marquette in the Upper Peninsula.
Before it was marked by a 98-foot-tall lighthouse, Stannard Rock was known as "one of the most treacherous reefs in the entire Great Lakes," according to Lake Superior Magazine.
The new weather buoy now sits about a mile away.
"Weather data has been collected at the top of the lighthouse for many years, but this is the first time that mariners will be able to see exactly what the waves are doing out there as well," said John Lenters, a senior scientist at Lentic Environmental Services, and contractor for Superior Watershed Partnership.
"We also anticipate that the information will be helpful for the Coast Guard, the Great Lakes Evaporation Network, and the National Weather Service," said Lenters, "particularly in improving wave models and forecasts that are currently being generated for the Great Lakes."
The Stannard Rock keepers would also use the radiotelephone to check on weather conditions before they began the multi-hour trip to or from the station."
At 6:30 p.m., their boat struck a bar forty miles from Marquette and sprang a leak.