dataset · Chicago Park District via Chicago Data Portal

Chicago beach water-quality automated sensors

Hourly Lake Michigan telemetry from Park District buoys at six Chicago beaches: water temperature, wave height, wave period, and turbidity. Sensor coverage has narrowed over time — only Ohio Street Beach is actively reporting in 2026.

data through 2026-06-13 · 46,675 sensor rows

rows per sensor · 2013–present

Hourly sensor rows by beach (all-time)

Ohio Street Beach

21K
Calumet Beach

7.6K
Montrose Beach

7.3K
Osterman Beach

4.0K
63rd Street Beach

3.4K
Rainbow Beach

3.3K
Old - Ohio Street Beach

7

0 21K max

The companion when-chicago-calls-style story The swimmer's safety gauge walks through what the 2015 multi-sensor record looked like, and the 24-hour lab lag that sits behind every beach advisory you've ever read.

Stories using this data

article

The swimmer's safety gauge

Chicago Park District buoys publish hourly water temperature, wave height, and turbidity from Lake Michigan. The 24-hour lab E. coli result lags the swimmer's afternoon by a full day. Walking through the last summer of six-sensor coverage — and the slow collapse of the network to one.