On August 27, 2026, a federal order directed US agencies to start calling this lake “Lake America.” New York and Canada are keeping “Lake Ontario.” Read what changed

LO Lake Ontario also known as Lake America

Data sources and methodology

Data Sources and Methodology

Where the numbers on this site come from, one paragraph per source, plus refresh cadence.

NOAA NDBC (National Data Buoy Center)

Water temperature, wave height, and wind for the /conditions/ pages and the map's temperature and wave layers come from NOAA NDBC Buoy 45012, in the eastern part of Lake Ontario. NDBC updates its standard report roughly every 30 to 60 minutes; the lake-data worker polls it on its own cron schedule and shows "data unavailable" for any field the buoy itself reports as missing.

NOAA CO-OPS (Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services)

Water level readings come from NOAA's CO-OPS API, using the water_level product with datum=IGLD. That request returns IGLD85 (International Great Lakes Datum of 1985), the Great Lakes standard reference datum, directly, confirmed live on 2026-08-28 for station 9052030 (Oswego).

NOAA GLERL (Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory)

Seasonal ice cover data is expected to come from GLERL. That feed is not wired into the worker yet, so the ice cover page says the current season's percentage is not yet published rather than showing an old or estimated number.

NWS api.weather.gov (Buffalo office, BUF)

Marine forecast zone geometry (9 LOZ zones covering Lake Ontario) comes from api.weather.gov. As of this site's research, that API does not yet serve marine zone forecast text directly for Lake Ontario zones, so the worker falls back to the nearest onshore grid forecast plus current buoy readings, and links out to the full NWS marine forecast text product.

NY State beach advisory feed

Live beach status (open, advisory, closed) comes from New York State's own beach advisory data, covering all 31 officially monitored Lake Ontario beaches. This is New York's single source for beach status; no county publishes an independent feed.

NY State Parks, NY DEC, NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, NOAA Electronic Navigational Chart data

Park operator information, fishing guidance, the Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary facts, and marina and boat launch listings come from these public sources respectively. Marina and boat launch data was last confirmed 2026-08-28.

If a fact is not yet sourced, the page says so instead of guessing.