How the live condition banners work, and what they’re telling you
The colored banners you may occasionally see at the top of ScooterCam pages are live weather alerts generated directly from our on-site Tempest weather station here on the Lake Michigan shoreline. When something significant happens — lightning, hail, high winds, or freezing temperatures — the station detects it and the site automatically posts a timestamped notice so you know what’s happening at the water right now.
The Tempest is a compact, all-in-one weather instrument mounted at the site. It measures temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, rainfall, UV index, and solar radiation — and it includes a dedicated lightning detector that can sense electrical activity within roughly 25 miles. Every five minutes, ScooterCam quietly checks in with the station and updates a small data file on the server. The alert banners read that file each time a page loads, so what you’re seeing is never more than five minutes old.
Alert types
When multiple alerts are active
Each alert tells you when the event started, how long it’s been going, and any relevant details — distance to the last lightning strike, wind direction, current temperature, rainfall accumulation. You can dismiss any alert with the ✕ button and it won’t reappear during your visit. Alerts clear themselves automatically once conditions return to normal, so there’s no stale information lingering from hours ago. The whole system runs unattended, 24 hours a day, year-round.
