For Friday, Aug. 28, 2026

1 – How high’s the water? 

Boaters and others who use water level tools to measure the Great Lakes rely on an official reference point called the Great Lakes Datum. 

The datum is getting an update soon, say officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. The agency is seeking input (https://buff.ly/m3tc0Sk) to better understand user needs and impacts. 

Michigan Sea Grant notes that the datum is updated periodically because the Earth’s crust is still slowly rebounding from the weight of glaciers that covered the region during the last ice age.

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2 – From the summer issue of the Lakes Letter, from the International Association for Great Lakes Research: 

CRASID is a tool built for Great Lakes communities. That’s CRASID, for Community Resilience and Adaptation Spatial Infrastructure Database. 

A Ph.D. candidate from Indiana University Bloomington writes that extreme weather events such as heavier rainfall are becoming more frequent and severe, which can increase the risk of flooding. 

Existing tools for measuring flood risk often miss the impacts of local factors like emergency services and neighborhood infrastructure. CRASID is meant to close that gap, dividing a watershed into a grid and allowing many different kinds of information to be compared on the same map. The design can support evacuation planning, for instance, so that from any location a user can look in multiple directions, compare routes, and find the safest way out during an emergency.

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3 – Fish, maps and other topics are on tap for the Fall Lecture Series at the Bay City State Park in Bangor Township.

The talks are held at the state park auditorium near Saginaw Bay. 

They include Mike Kelly from the Saginaw Bay Watershed Initiative Network talking about lake sturgeon restoration at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 22. 

Rhett Mohler from Saginaw Valley State University will discuss a project to create an online map of the state park, including historical aerial photography, on Tuesday, Sept. 29.

More information on the lecture series is on the Friends of the Bay City State Park’s Facebook page. 

– Mr. Great Lakes is heard at 6:45 and 8:45 Friday mornings on Delta College Public Radio 90.1 FM WUCX in University Center, Michigan, near Bay City (listen live). Follow @jeffkart on Twitter or even Bluesky #MrGreatLakes

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