Lakebrief

About Lakebrief

Lakebrief is a dashboard for the kind of pre-launch check small-craft sailors do anyway: what's the wind doing, is the water at a sensible level, and is there anything I should know before stepping off the dock? It pulls live data from authoritative sources and folds them into one screen per lake.

Data sources

  • Wind & weather: Open-Meteo — multiple model ensemble (ECMWF IFS, GFS HRRR, ICON Global), refreshed continuously.
  • Water level: USGS Water Services — gauge readings updated every 15 minutes for most reservoirs. Lakes without a USGS gauge fall back to a "no data" state rather than fabricate a reading.
  • Active alerts: National Weather Service active-alerts feed for each lake's coordinates, plus a 30-minute check of state-park advisory pages where the operating agency publishes them (NJDEP today, more agencies on the roadmap).
  • Park rules & specs: cited per lake against authoritative public sources — Wikipedia articles, operating-agency operations reports, USACE district bulletins. Each value carries an inline citation.

The sailing score

Each lake's sailing score is a 0–100 number that combines four factors weighted for small-craft sailing (boats under 25 ft — dinghies, day-sailors, small keelboats):

  • Wind speed (40%) — plateaus at 12–15 kt, dinghies still happy through 18 kt; smooth sigmoid descent toward any documented park-rule cutoff.
  • Gust risk (25%) — lower of absolute gust intensity and the gust factor (peak/mean ratio); above 1.6 is squally, above 1.8 is convective-squall territory.
  • Water level (20%) — gradient from full pool to historical low.
  • Rain (15%) — peak hourly intensity over the day's forecast.

Two modifiers apply on top of the weighted sum: visibility under 5 mi adds a small drag, and elevated CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) flags thunderstorm potential that pure rain misses — above 2,500 J/kg caps the score at 30 with a stay-ashore rationale. Park-rule wind cutoffs (where the operating agency publishes one) hard-zero the score because launching is no longer legal. The rationale string under the score explains which factor is dominating.

See the sailing-score glossary entry for the full breakdown.

Disclaimer

Lakebrief surfaces data from official sources but is not itself an official source. Always verify boating conditions and park rules with the operating agency before launching. The sailing score is a decision aid, not a substitute for skipper judgment. Conditions on inland lakes can change fast.