Every panel on Michigan Gateway pulls from a third-party feed — the National Weather Service, USGS Water Data, NOAA, EPA AirNow and BEACON, FEMA OpenFEMA, EGLE, MDOT 511, USAJobs, Grants.gov, and others. Those feeds are excellent, but they are operational systems with characteristics every reader should understand.
Feed characteristics to know
Latency
"Live" means recent, not instantaneous. NWS alerts typically appear here within 1–3 minutes of issuance; USGS gauge readings are sampled every 15 minutes; some EPA and FEMA datasets refresh hourly or daily.
Provisional values
USGS streamgage readings are provisional until reviewed and quality-controlled by the agency, often weeks later. Anomalies during ice-up or sensor maintenance are common.
Outages
Upstream feeds occasionally fail, return partial data, or change schema without notice. When that happens, panels may be empty or show stale values until the feed recovers.
Geographic precision
County-level alerts cover entire counties; storms and floods do not. Always check the underlying NWS or USGS source for the exact polygon, gauge location, or river mile.
Fit for purpose
✓ Good for
- Situational awarenessOne screen showing the day's Michigan signals at a glance.
- Linking outEvery panel cites and links to its upstream source for verification.
- Historical contextPages show recent trends and notable past events for orientation.
- DiscoverySurfacing grants, jobs, and data points you might otherwise miss.
✗ Not good for
- Life-safety decisionsEvacuating, sheltering, driving, swimming — rely on official sources and on-the-ground judgment.
- Regulatory complianceIf you must report on flood stages or water quality, use the agency's authoritative system.
- Financial decisionsGrant deadlines and FEMA award amounts shown here are summaries; verify with the originating agency.
- Legal proceedingsScreenshots of Michigan Gateway are not admissible substitutes for certified agency records.
Reporting issues
If you spot a panel showing wrong, stale, or misleading data, please contact us. Verified data issues are corrected as quickly as we can pull a fix and redeploy — usually within hours.