Skip to content

NDBC station · fixed platform

Station CWCI: Caribou Island

47.334°N 85.833°W · Lake Superior from Grand Marais MI to Whitefish Point MI 5NM off shore to the US/Canadian border

GOon wind alone, for a typical 25 to 35 ft center console. This station is not reporting seas.
Wind
SE 10 kt
Air
62°F
Pressure
1014.6 mb

Reported 1 hr 26 min ago · National Data Buoy Center, station CWCI

A buoy reading is not a go/no-go

CWCI measures the water. It does not know your boat. Fifteen knots and three feet is a pleasant afternoon on one hull and a beating on another, and the difference is the two or three numbers you already carry in your head. GoNoGo Weather scores this station and the forecast around it against your own limits and gives you one straight answer, with the hour it changes.

Score CWCI against YOUR boat

Free, no card required.

How to read station CWCI

This is a fixed station: a platform or a shore mast. It reports wind, pressure and temperature reliably and usually carries no wave sensor, so seas here come from the model rather than from an instrument.

Period matters as much as height. Four feet at ten seconds is a long, easy swell; four feet at four seconds is a short steep chop that stops a boat. Wind against tide steepens everything, and a buoy cannot see that from where it floats. Age matters too: stations go quiet, and a reading that has not updated in three hours is history rather than weather.

This station sits in the NWS marine zone Lake Superior from Grand Marais MI to Whitefish Point MI 5NM off shore to the US/Canadian border (LSZ267), which is the forecast we read alongside it.

This is a read of official forecasts and observations, not a guarantee. You know your boat and your crew. The call is yours.