How I score lake days

The Lake Day and Fishing scores are a plain algorithm I run on public weather and lake data. They are my opinion for planning a day, not a safety call. Before you go out, check the official National Weather Service forecast and use your own judgment on the water.

What the scores mean

Each score is a number from 1 to 10 with a plain-language band and the conditions that produced it. Lake Day runs Poor, Fair, Good, Great, Perfect. Fishing runs Tough, Slow, Fair, Good, Hot Bite. The number is a summary. The conditions behind it are the truth, so weigh those too.

What goes into the Lake Day score

Lake Day is a boating and general-recreation read. It weighs sustained wind the most, then rain, air temperature, sun and cloud, and the reservoir's level and generation. The weights and cutoffs come from published sources: the NWS Lake Wind Advisory criteria, the NWS Heat Index, the EPA UV Index, and recreation-climate research.

Lightning is a hard stop

Two things cap the score at Poor no matter how nice the rest of the day looks. The first is an active NWS Severe Thunderstorm, Tornado, or Special Marine Warning. The second is a lightning strike detected nearby in the last 30 minutes. That second one follows the NOAA 30/30 rule: when lightning is close, you wait it out. I do not have a lightning-distance reading, so I gate on those two signals rather than claim a mileage I cannot measure. Wider-area lightning coverage is on my list to add.

What goes into the Fishing score

Fishing weighs water temperature for the chosen species, the wind, the reservoir's level and current, and sky cover. The fishing score covers largemouth, striped bass, and crappie, with a different water-temperature preference for each. Barometric pressure trend is the input most anglers ask about, and I want it in, but I am still wiring up a trend source I trust. Until that is in place, the current score does not use pressure. I would rather tell you that than pretend a number is in the math when it is not.

An honest note on accuracy. A 2023 study in Discover Applied Sciences tracked over 1,300 hours of fishing against seven popular forecast apps and did not find that their scores reliably predicted catch rates. So treat the Fishing score as a tidy summary of the conditions anglers tend to watch, not a promise that you will catch fish. The lake decides that part.

Swimming is informational only

I do not score swimming, and I never will. The swim reading is water temperature and a plain note about comfort and cold-shock risk, drawn from NWS cold-water-safety guidance, and it leaves the call to you.

How fresh the data is

Scores update about every minute from on-dock sensors and public feeds. If the data goes stale, I stop publishing a verdict rather than hand you an old one. The hourly outlook uses each hour's own forecast wind, so a calm morning and a blustery afternoon score differently instead of sharing one wind reading.