By Max W. Cottrell

Click to expand photos.

Every living thing on this planet from the smallest viruses to humans to giant whales needs 3 things to live; water, food and air. What every living thing depends on is the weather. It ties every single life together. Weather controls how we get our food, where we find our water and the quality of the air we breathe. Accurate predictions of weather is rapidly becoming one of the most important aspects of 21st century life on planet Earth. Ongoing work with computer modeling is rapidly increasing the ability to forecast weather more accurately for a longer time, says Bruce Cambell (see photo, left) of the Gaylord, Michigan facility.

Gales? You’re covered. Blizzards, tornados, thunderstorms? Gaylord NWS is your best friend in northern Michigan. Manned by talented people like Cambell, the station also has 5, count them 5 weather broadcasting stations throughout northern Michigan and works closely with the National Forest Service to predict fire danger. 

Working from what looks like the bridge of a starship, the staff at Gaylord NWS works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week keeping the civilian, aviation and boating populations safe and snug as they go about their business. The office also issues aviation forecasts for Traverse City, Alpena and Pellston, Michigan.

This innocent looking facility strikes you as one of the most important weather forecasting facilities in the midwest if not the nation. Responsible for over 4500 marine forecasts covering 4300 miles of great lakes shoreline (12 marine zones in the great lakes)  for Lakes Michigan, Huron and parts of Superior, NWS Gaylord  covers everything from freighter safety to forest fire forecasts to blizzard warnings to aviation warnings and forecasts. Safety and weather warnings for freighters that carry many of the products and supplies that the midwest of the United States relies on comes from this office situated in the smack dab in the center of Michigan between Lake Michigan and Huron almost right on the 45th parallel, the midpoint between the equator and the North Pole.

Another part of weather data comes from unmanned data collection. Here's a photo of a "Fischer-Porter-Belfort" electromechanical rain gauge that measures rainfall by the weight of the rain and tracks the data at 15 minute intervals. They're all over the state of Michigan. 

 Weather predictions are done by 3 advanced computer models running on computers in Washington D.C. using physics formulas that would make Einstein blush. The knowledgeable people at the local National Weather Service offices like Gaylord  (most with masters degrees) pick and choose between the predictions depending on which model happens to be producing the most accurate weather outlooks. 2006 marks the 10th anniversary of the installation of the weather radar at Gaylord. Future plans call for a phase array radar similar to what the United States Navy uses which will greatly speed up weather radar updates. You see, the weather radar dishes rotate at a rate of about 5 minutes, scanning a different altitude each time. That’s why weather radar is updated every 15 minutes. A lot can happen in 15 minutes, so speeding up the process is job one for researchers working on the project.

Also on hand was the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, another division of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) which now has a buoy tethering system for scuba divers and snorkeling shipwreck explorers. The program is approved by the Coast Guard and are highly visible for everyone interested in seeing great lakes shipwrecks, which include the E.B Allen, the Montana and the Shamrock, all ships that have sunk off of Thunder Bay. I'll be covering that in an upcoming article.

The author would like to thank the NWS Gaylord, Michigan staff for their time.