Lake Erie Boating

Lake Erie is shallow, and that changes everything. Waves here stack up short and steep, so a two-foot day is a rougher ride than two feet on deep water. Lake Erie Boating gives you a straight answer before you hitch up the trailer: Calm, Good, Choppy, Rough, or Stay In — for the ramp you actually launch from. THE FORECAST Wind, gusts and direction, hour by hour. Wave height and period. Rain chance and rainfall. Water temperature from the nearest buoy that is actually reporting. Two days of detail, seven days of outlook, and the next stretch of calm daylight — measured from real sunrise and sunset, so it tells the truth in April as well as July. 23 launch points from Maumee Bay to Buffalo, across all three basins. WHAT OTHER APPS WON'T TELL YOU Which way the wind sits against your shoreline. An offshore wind leaves the ramp glassy and gets worse every mile out, all while pushing you away from shore. That is the setup that catches people out, and this app names it instead of leaving you to work it out from a compass heading. How far the wind has tipped the lake. A sustained blow physically shoves Erie's water to one end — feet of it. The lake level card compares the Toledo and Buffalo gauges, so you know when one end is running shallow and when it is all about to come surging back. LIVE FROM THE LAKE Readings from 30 NOAA buoy and shore stations, sorted by distance from you. A map of the whole lake that switches between wind, wave height, water temperature and launch sites, so you can see where the rough water sits rather than reading it off a list. Most Erie buoys come out of the water for the winter, and the app is upfront about which ones have gone quiet.