Surface water
--°F
at the Bell Buoy, 1 ft
Live from the Sill
Conditions on the lagoon
Readings come off the Council's staff gauge and the thermistor string moored at the Bell Buoy, sampled on the minute. The lagoon runs its own weather: when the main lake is white-capping out past Indian Rock, it is common for the water in here to be glass.
Air
--°F
Cedar Shelf shade
Wind at the mouth
--mph
—
Inside the sill
--mph
Loon Corner, sheltered
Secchi clarity
--ft
white disc, shaded side
Lagoon level
--in
vs. summer full pool
Loons counted
--
this morning's circuit
Sill flag
—
posted at the launch
Sampled — · thermistor string #3 · gauge datum 2,436.10 ft
Chart & bathymetry
Every corner has a name
The Council's chart, redrawn from the 1971 dive survey and corrected after the 2011 sounding. Click any marker. Depths are in feet below summer full pool, which is where the lake is held from the third week of June to Labor Day.
Click a marker · or use the sounder below
Depth sounder
Click anywhere on the water above to drop a ping. The transducer reads bottom, the log fills in. Sixteen pings makes a usable profile.
--ft
0 pings
Hydrology
Why it is warm in here
The lagoon is a kettle basin that the lake flooded, and the ridge of granite the ice left across its mouth — the Sill — is the whole story. Water only exchanges with Priest Lake over the top six feet. The cold stays out. The heat stays in. By the third week of July the difference at one foot of depth is routinely nine degrees, and it has been measured at fourteen.
Thermistor string
Drag the probe down the water column.
thermocline · 22 ft
1 ft
bottom · 34 ft · the Bell Hole
--°F
--% surface light
—
The breath
A closed basin with a narrow mouth sloshes on a fixed period, and this one is unusually clean about it: 11 minutes 40 seconds, measured off the gauge in 1971 and never off by more than four seconds since. You can watch it against a piling. The water climbs a finger's width, holds, and goes back out.
—
next slack in --
amplitude -- in
6 ft
Water over the Sill at full pool. A loaded ski boat clears it. A sailboat does not.
34 ft
The Bell Hole, dead center. Kettle-punched, near-vertical on its north wall.
+9°F
Typical late-July surface difference between the lagoon and the open bay.
78°F
Record surface temperature, August 11, 1998. The lake outside read 64°F that afternoon.
11:40
Seiche period, minutes and seconds. Set by the basin, not by the weather.
1.9 mi
Shoreline, walked at low water. Two thirds of it is downed cedar.
Record
One hundred and thirty-odd years of paperwork
Drag the year. Everything on this timeline is in the Council binder at the launch, and most of it is in the Priest Lake Museum besides.
1889
—
—
—
Natural history
What lives here
The warm shallow water and the sill together make the lagoon a nursery for half the west shore. Click a card. The highlighted ones are what the Council's volunteers expect to find on the water at this hour, this month.
Activity flags are seasonal and time-of-day, recomputed on load · survey protocol unchanged since 1998
The other record
Things people say about the lagoon
The Council takes no position on any of this. It is written down here because it gets told at the launch anyway, and told badly.
Rung 0 times from this device. The real one is on the post at the launch and has a rope you should not pull after eight.
Field log
What people saw
The paper log lives in the ammo can bolted to the launch post. This is the overflow. Entries stay on your own device unless you copy them into the can.
Visiting
How to be here
Getting in
From the Kalispell Bay launch, run south along the shore for nine tenths of a mile. When Indian Rock is off your port bow and the two big cedars on the point line up, you are on the range and the Sill is under you. Come over it slow and square. People who cut the corner find the granite on the east shoulder, and there is a lot of paint on it.
Once you are inside
- No wake, the whole basin. It is 41 acres. There is nowhere to go fast.
- Quiet hours 8pm to 8am. Paddle craft only, no motors, no music. This is the rule people actually enforce.
- Stay off the Cribwork. Nine feet of water and a hundred and seventeen years of loose timber. It has taken three lower units this decade.
- Loon Corner is closed May 15 – July 10. Buoyed. The nest is four feet from the water and they abandon it over nothing.
- Pack the shore out. There is no service in here, no can, and no one paid to come get it.
Season, roughly
The Council
Formed in the fall of 1998 after the drawdown scare, forty-one households on the west shore, no dues and no officers except a secretary who keeps the binder. It maintains the gauge, the buoys, the range markers on the point, and the bell. It has no authority over anything and has never needed any.
Five questions