Spray on the South Haven pier, and six more cameras in a November gale
The South Haven pier light was standing in white water this morning. I pulled a frame off the South Beach camera at 13:12 UTC on 2026-11-05 and the spray was coming over the catwalk, the sand wet a long way back from the waterline, the lake grey out to the horizon. That is the small version of what is coming. South Beach sits in the marine zone from St Joseph to South Haven, and the zone forecast issued at 03:17 CST today puts waves there at 5 to 8 ft this afternoon, 10 to 14 ft tonight, and 14 to 18 ft occasionally to 23 ft by Friday.
Gale warnings went up this morning across Lake Superior and every open-water zone of Lake Michigan. Seven cameras on the site are pointed at it, and they do not all come good on the same day.
Superior is the one to open today
The heavy water is on Lake Superior, and it is there now rather than tomorrow. The Marquette to Munising forecast, issued 05:01 EST on 2026-11-05, carries a gale warning from 10 AM through late tonight: north wind up to 30 knots, gale force gusts up to 46 knots, waves building to 15 to 20 feet and occasionally to 25. East of there, Grand Marais to Whitefish Point has 11 to 15 feet occasionally to 19, gusting 41.
Two buoys out there are still reporting. Mid-lake station 45001, at 48.061 N 87.793 W, read north at 15.0 m/s gusting 19.0 m/s at 12:40 UTC today, ie about 29 knots gusting 37. Eastern Superior's 45004 read 16.0 gusting 20.0 in the same minute, with the pressure at 1000.8 hPa. Both have had their wave sensors pulled for the winter, so every height above is the forecast rather than a reading.
Two Superior cameras are worth the click. Lake Avenue, Grand Marais looks northwest over the harbour at Grand Marais, Michigan, across a gazebo and a picnic pavilion to the sand point that closes the bay. At 13:16 UTC the leaves were down and yellow on the grass, the tarmac was wet, and the cloud was a flat grey lid. It is a stills camera rather than a stream, so it moves in steps of minutes. The harbour itself was calm, because that is what the point is for. Beyond it, that pale strip is the open lake and the 11 to 15 feet.
The better one for weather on the lens is the Portage Lake lift bridge at Hancock, between Hancock and Houghton on the Keweenaw. At 13:16 UTC the bridge towers were half into low cloud, the navigation lights were burning at eight in the morning local, and the rain was sitting on the glass in streaks. The canal underneath was flat. You are not watching waves there, you are watching a front come across the peninsula.
Michigan fills in tonight and peaks on Friday
Lake Michigan is a day behind. The south-lake gale warning runs from noon CST today to Friday afternoon, and the wave forecast climbs through the whole of it. Further north, Pentwater to Manistee does not go under its gale warning until 4 PM EST, with north gales to 35 knots and waves 7 to 10 feet overnight.
- South Beach, South Haven is the one already working. Its stream was serving 5 to 6.5 second segments when I read it at 13:12 UTC, and the pier light with the catwalk behind it fills the left of the frame. Best after dark on Friday, when the forecast peaks.
- 5th Avenue Beach, Manistee burns its own clock into the corner: my frame read 2026-11-05 08:15:29. Two-second segments, so it moves properly. The lake in it was still only ruffled, with the breakwater light a pale stick on the horizon. Open it after 4 PM EST and it will be a different camera.
- Port Washington harbour in Wisconsin looks out over the stone breakwater to open water. At 13:16 UTC there were perhaps thirty gulls up and working the wind over the harbour, which is the tell before anything shows in the water.
- Charlevoix and Bay Harbor at 45.3200, -85.2600 watches a channel out to Little Traverse Bay with the marina slips empty for the season and a black band of cloud sitting on the horizon. The boats came out weeks ago. The dock timber is what takes the spray here.
- Lake Michigan Cam at Grand Haven is the one I could not open from here, because its host turns away datacentre traffic. Our own nightly check reached it today, and the page shows 92% of its last 12 checks passing.
The 15 to 20 feet off Marquette is five nautical miles offshore, and the Marquette cameras on the site are the M-28 and M-95 road cameras inland, so the heaviest sea of the week is the one nobody gets to watch.
What we will do with it
A gale is a free test of a camera fleet. Wind takes the pointing off a pole camera, rain takes the focus, and a camera that has served the same placid frame for a month looks no different from a working one until the water moves. We re-fetch every camera on the site about once a day, and over the next 48 hours the seven above get read against their own history rather than against each other.
The number worth reporting back is how many of the seven are still answering on Saturday morning. I sampled the two stills cameras every 20 seconds from 13:16:19 to 13:26:10 UTC today, thirty requests each: Grand Marais turned over one new frame, at 13:21:04, and Hancock served identical bytes for the whole ten minutes. That is slow enough that I want a longer run before I call it a refresh period rather than a stall, and the run goes on tonight. If you want the better view in the meantime, it is South Haven after dark tomorrow, when the forecast says 14 to 18 feet and the pier light will be the only thing holding still.