A Weather Forecast for Your Backyard—Literally
Mobile device users can now download a free weather app from forecasting upstart, Nooly, to get hyper-local “Nowcasts” for the put-in, takeout, beach or anywhere else in the continental U.S. and southern Canada. Competing with popular weather apps like Dark Sky and The Weather Channel, Nooly stands apart by offering paddlers and outdoor enthusiasts “micro weather” predictions for areas as small as 0.4 square miles (1 square kilometer), updating from real-time satellite data every 5 minutes.
Using an impressive network of NOAA radar stations and NASA satellites, Nooly is the only commercially available weather application that makes its own algorithm-guided predictions by tracking and analyzing each cloud above the continental U.S. Users can download Nooly by visiting the App Store or Google Play. Via Nooly.
Lake Superior Islands Protected
Lake Superior Watershed Conservancy (LSWC) recently announced the acquisition of 20 islands off the coast of Lake Superior Provincial Park in the Gargantua archipelago.
Through the facilitation of LSWC, the 20 pristine islands totaling 128 acres were preserved through a landmark cross-border gift to American Friends of Canadian Land Trusts.
These islands have long been special to Native and modern paddlers alike. Islands like Devil’s Warehouse are home to sites of great cultural and natural significance, including a cave where Ojibwa mined ochre hundreds of years ago to paint the famous Agawa pictographs; nesting Peregrine Falcons and rare arctic alpine plants.
Many people assumed the islands were part of the Lake Superior Provincial Park, but since the early 1900s an American family has owned the archipelago. The great-great-grandfather of the present generation was a lawyer in Detroit and received the deed for the islands as payment from a client who couldn’t pay his bill for services rendered.
Stewardship of the islands is now the responsibility of Lake Superior Watershed Conservancy, and the protected lands are open to the public for recreational and educational use. Via SooToday.com.
Black Feather/Polar Sea Adventure Partnership
In January, two of the most experienced Canadian and Arctic adventure companies, Black Feather and Polar Sea Adventures, joined forces.
Black Feather, owned by 2011 NWT Tourism Lifetime Achievement Award honoree Wendy Grater, has been operating trips across Canada since 1972, specializing in canoe trips on the Nahanni, Mountain and other Northwest Territories rivers, as well as hiking and sea kayaking in Nunavut and Greenland.
Polar Sea Adventures, run by David Reid since 1996, is an award-winning expedition company, based in the Arctic. In recent years, the company has also specialized in customized projects, in particular notable film and television productions such as BBC Planet Earth and Frozen Planet.
As a partnership, Black Feather and Polar Sea Adventures will be administered out of the Black Feather office in Parry Sound, Ontario. David Reid will join Black Feather’s guiding team as one of their senior guides, and also oversee the special projects run in the Baffin region. Via Black Feather.
Learn more about the science of weather prediction in Adventure Kayak, Spring 2013. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.
