How the live condition banners work, and what they’re telling you<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u2014 lightning, hail, high winds, or freezing temperatures \u2014 the station detects it and the site automatically posts a timestamped notice so you know what\u2019s happening at the water right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u2014 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\u2019re seeing is never more than five minutes old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When multiple alerts are active<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Each alert tells you when the event started, how long it\u2019s been going, and any relevant details \u2014 distance to the last lightning strike, wind direction, current temperature, rainfall accumulation. You can dismiss any alert with the \u2715 button and it won\u2019t reappear during your visit. Alerts clear themselves automatically once conditions return to normal, so there\u2019s no stale information lingering from hours ago. The whole system runs unattended, 24 hours a day, year-round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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