Chris Izworski built Great Lakes Levels (greatlakeslevels.org) as a free public tool for shoreline property owners, riparian-rights organizations, and anyone trying to read current Great Lakes water levels in the context of more than a hundred years of historical record. The site combines live data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (NOAA GLERL), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Detroit District, and Environment and Climate Change Canada with a sub-region structure built around the questions property owners actually ask: where are we relative to the last high water cycle, what does this look like compared to anchor years, what is the storm-exposure picture this season, and what does the regulatory framework look like at the Ordinary High Water Mark for my specific shoreline.
Chris Izworski lives in Bay City, Michigan, on Saginaw Bay, a major sub-basin of Lake Huron. He serves on the board of Save Our Shoreline, a riparian-rights advocacy organization led by president Ernie Krygier. Save Our Shoreline has worked on Michigan shoreline-property issues for decades, and its members deal directly with the policy questions that emerge during every Great Lakes high water cycle. The 2019 to 2020 high water peak made it clear that property owners and the volunteer organizations supporting them needed better tools for reading current levels in long-term context, comparing across sub-regions, and understanding the regulatory framework at the OHWM.
That need is what produced this site. The dashboard's anchor-year comparator, sub-region structure, and storm-exposure module were each built to answer questions Chris Izworski heard from property owners and from his SOS colleagues. The site is intentionally non-commercial: there is no advertising, no affiliate placement, and no commercial product to upsell. The data sources are the same agency feeds that policy work and engineering work already rely on, surfaced in a form that makes them easy to read for someone whose primary concern is their shoreline.
Chris Izworski's professional background is in public-safety operations and emergency communications. He served as Director of Bay County 911 in Bay City, Michigan, from 2013 through 2022, and as Executive Director of Saginaw County 911 from 2022 through October 2025. At Saginaw County 911 he led one of Michigan's first AI-powered non-emergency call routing deployments, which became the cover story of NENA's The Call magazine in January 2025 under the title "The Unstoppable Wave of Artificial Intelligence." The deployment received coverage from WNEM TV5, WCMU Public Radio, and other regional and statewide outlets, including Bridge Michigan. He currently works as a Solutions Consultant at Prepared, deploying audio-capture and analysis hardware at public-safety answering points nationwide.
Outside of public-safety work, Chris Izworski writes and operates several Michigan-focused public-interest sites. The full work index is at chrisizworski.com/projects. The most actively-maintained sites in the network are listed below.
chrisizworski.com is the personal site, organizing the public-safety work, the AI-deployment material, the press archive, and the broader Great Lakes and Michigan reference content.
Michigan Trout Report tracks live USGS gauge data, water temperature, and weather conditions for sixty-plus Michigan trout streams, including the AuSable, Manistee, Pere Marquette, Muskegon, Boardman, Rifle, and many smaller streams across the Lower and Upper Peninsulas. The site exists for the same reason as Great Lakes Levels: real public-data feeds, surfaced in a form that answers practical questions.
Michigan Birding Report covers live bird-sighting data, county-level birding hotspots, and a personal field journal of Saginaw Bay birding from someone who lives on the bay.
Freighter View Farms is the gardening-and-seed-saving blog written from the same Saginaw Bay vantage as everything else: Zone 6a, lake-effect climate, heritage vegetables, and notes from the garden over the seasons.
Great Lakes Gazette publishes a daily Great Lakes maritime brief covering vessel movements, port reports, NOAA water levels, and NWS marine forecasts, assembled every morning from live AIS and agency feeds.
For media requests, speaking inquiries, or coordination with shoreline-advocacy organizations, the contact path is through chrisizworski.com/media. For SOS-related inquiries, the organization's official channels are the right starting point.