About LakePulse
LakePulse is a dashboard for the kind of sailor who checks three weather apps and a gauge site before committing to the drive. We put it all on one screen: live wind and gusts, water level and temperature from the USGS gauge, a 7-day hourly forecast, weather radar and launch maps, solunar fishing times — and a plain-spoken score for whether it’s worth rigging up.
Where the data comes from
- Water level & temperature — USGS National Water Information System instantaneous values, direct from each lake’s gauge (typically 15-minute to hourly cadence).
- Wind, gusts & direction — Open-Meteo forecasts (NOAA HRRR/GFS, DWD ICON and others), resolved to each lake’s exact coordinates.
- Radar & maps — RainViewer radar tiles over CARTO / OpenStreetMap base maps; ramps, marinas, and clubs from OpenStreetMap.
- Solunar times — Computed on the fly for each lake’s timezone from standard astronomical approximations. Solunar tables are an angling tradition with little scientific support — treat them as a tiebreaker, not a forecast.
How the sailing score works
Every hour is scored 0–10 against your sailor profile. The default Cruising profile gives sustained wind between 6 and 16 knots full marks; Beginner · Kayak centers on 3–10 with stricter gust and cold penalties; Performance · Wing shifts the band to 8–22 and forgives gusts. Gusts running far above the sustained wind, rain probability, and cold each apply further penalties — the cold penalty uses the gauge’s water temperature when the lake has a sensor, falling back to air temperature. Pick your profile on any lake dashboard — the whole site retunes.
No account, no tracking
Saved lakes, your profile, and wind alerts live in your browser’s storage — LakePulse keeps no user accounts and stores no personal data on its servers. (Your browser does fetch forecasts and map tiles directly from Open-Meteo, USGS, RainViewer, and OpenStreetMap — those providers see the request, not us.) Alerts run as browser notifications while a LakePulse tab is open. You can also embed a free live-conditions widgetfor any lake on your club or marina site.
Disclaimer
LakePulse is an independent tool built on public data. Gauges fail, sensors ice over, and weather models are wrong sometimes. Nothing here is a substitute for official small-craft advisories, local knowledge, or your own judgment — see the full data disclaimer. Always check conditions at the ramp before launching, wear appropriate gear for the water temperature, and when in doubt, stay ashore.
Contact & corrections
LakePulse is built on public data, and mistakes happen. If a reading, lake name, or link looks wrong, email [email protected] and we’ll check it against the source gauge or map — corrections land in the next data refresh.