Hourly Lake Michigan telemetry from Park District buoys at six Chicago beaches: water temperature, wave height, wave period, and turbidity. Sensor coverage has narrowed over time — only Ohio Street Beach is actively reporting in 2026.
data through 2026-09-04 · 48,647 sensor rows
rows per sensor · 2013–present
Six water sensors at the peak of the network (2014–2015) have shrunk to one currently reporting (Ohio Street Beach). Most beaches' last readings landed in March 2025; the lakefront's automated monitoring is now a single point of telemetry.
23K
23,033
The other 6 · scale below excludes the leader
The companion when-chicago-calls-style story The swimmer's safety gauge walks through what the 2015 multi-sensor record looked like, and the 24-hour lab lag that sits
behind every beach advisory you've ever read.