Chicago, Illinois, Directional Wave Gauge

The Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL) operated and maintained a directional wave

gauge near the Harrison-Dever water intake cribs from 1989 through 2003. Data are

available on the Internet beginning from October 1991 through June 2003 from

http://sandbar.wes.army.mil (select "Coastal Data" and scroll down to find Chicago, IL hot

link)

Issue

Information from the wave gauge has been used to support projects of the Chicago

District of the US Army Corps of Engineers. Data are also used by the National Weather

Service to validate nearshore forecasts and by the Wave Information Studies (WIS) to

validate hindcasted wave data.

All data listings and plots are posted to http://sandbar.wes.army.mil. Additionally, climatic

Products

summaries and extremal analysis are updated annually and posted to the Internet.

Supporting Technology

Gauge was bottom mounted and data were transmitted via double armored cable to a

remote terminal unit (RTU) mounted in the crib. The RTU was polled every 2 hr and data

were transferred by telephone to a computer at CHL where it was analyzed, quality-

checked and posted to the Web.

Knowledge of actual wave conditions allows the Chicago District to respond effectively

Benefits

when storms threaten the lakeshore

U.S. Army Engineer District, Chicago

Sponsors

Margaret A. Sabol, Margaret.Sabol@erdc.usace.army.mil http://sandbar.wes.army.mil

Point of Contact

U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center

December 2004

Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (Project/Mission Support)

www.erdc.usace.army.mil