Michigan Gateway is a free, independently operated dashboard that aggregates public data from
authoritative agencies. It is not itself an authoritative source and should not be
relied on for any decision involving life safety, legal compliance, or financial commitment.
For weather emergencies, call 911. For official forecasts and warnings, visit
weather.gov or your local
National Weather Service office.
Why a disclaimer is necessary
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:
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.
What Michigan Gateway is good for
Situational awareness — a single screen showing the day's Michigan signals at a glance
Linking out — every panel cites and links to its upstream source for verification
Historical context — pages show recent trends and notable past events for orientation
Discovery — surfacing grants, jobs, and data points you might otherwise miss
What it is not good for
Life-safety decisions. Whether to evacuate, shelter, drive, swim, or engage emergency services — always rely on official sources and on-the-ground judgment.
Regulatory compliance. If you are required to report on flood stages, water quality, air quality, or any other regulated metric, use the agency's authoritative system, not Michigan Gateway.
Financial decisions. Grant deadlines, FEMA award amounts, and economic figures shown here are summaries; verify with the originating agency before acting.
Legal proceedings. Screenshots of Michigan Gateway are not admissible substitutes for certified records from the underlying agencies.
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.