Now back in Lake Michigan for the summer season is the Cook Nuclear Power Plant weather buoy.
Cook Plant spokesperson Bill Downey tells us the buoy owned by Limnotech has been sponsored by Cook for at least ten years now, offering live readings of lake conditions about a half mile off shore from the plant. So, what sort of data does it record?
“All kinds of things,” Downey said. “It’s wind direction, wind speed, gust, wave height. You can get into the technical data, like mean wave direction and atmospheric pressure and that type of stuff. And it updates all of this information approximately every 10 minutes or so.”
Downey says the Cook Plant buoy is deployed every spring and will remain in the water for anyone to use throughout the boating season.
“Outside of the plant, we do have some folks that go out on the lake on the weekends and go fishing and that kind of stuff, and they love it. They’re very grateful that it’s out there because they use that information quite frequently before they decide to head out on the water.”
In some years, you can see regularly-updated videos recorded by the buoy on its website, but it doesn’t look like the video part is working this year. However, the buoy’s site still shows all of the lake conditions mentioned by Downey.
Downey says the plant sponsors the buoy to provide a public service to those in the community who want to boat safely in the lake.
“We’ve got a lot of folks here right at Cook Plant that like to go out and use the lake, but certainly there are many, many more that are residents and visitors who like to go out on the lake, and this is a very helpful tool for them, and we want to make sure that we’re partners with the community in giving that data. It’s just something small we can do by having this right outside our plant and being right here on the lake.”
You can find the Cook Plant buoy website right here. It also posts data here.
