NDBC station · fixed platform
Station SVNM4: South Haven Light, South Haven, MI
42.401°N 86.288°W · St Joseph to South Haven MI
- Wind
- ESE 7 kt, gusting 9
- Air
- 73°F
Reported 37 min ago · National Data Buoy Center, station SVNM4
A buoy reading is not a go/no-go
SVNM4 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 SVNM4 against YOUR boatFree, no card required.
How to read station SVNM4
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 St Joseph to South Haven MI (LMZ844), which is the forecast we read alongside it.
Nearby stations
- 45168 · South Haven Buoy, MI · 2 nm
- HLNM4 · 9087031 · 23 nm
- 45026 · Cook Nuclear Plant Buoy, Stevensville, MI · 29 nm
- 45029 · Holland Buoy, MI · 30 nm
This is a read of official forecasts and observations, not a guarantee. You know your boat and your crew. The call is yours.