Lake Michigan

Local surfer and Greenhouse Surfboards founder Ken Cole created the world’s first leaf-based surfboard to encompass what he believes is the art, soul and sustainable future of surfing.

Some people mark the new year by making a resolution, others do the Polar Bear Plunge and jump into Lake Michigan, and some fly a kite. That’s what will be happening Jan. 1 along Milwaukee’s lakefront at Veterans Park. We meet the man behind the 38th Cool Fool Kite Festival and learn how he got swept into the kite world.

The cold, deep underwater holes offer a look at Lake Michigan’s distant past.

It’s been over a month since the Milwaukee County Parks reopened McKinley Beach — it was initially closed in 2020 after at least four people drowned in dangerous currents.

WUWM takes a walk with a chemistry professor on the shore of Lake Michigan.

A Bubbler Talk listener asks how Lake Michigan often has several shades of blue at once.

Lake Michigan is teeming with life. But over time, its food web — from the smallest plankton to the largest fish — has been impacted. Overfishing and waves of invasive species have taken their toll. Now, climate change is flexing its muscles in the Lake Michigan ecosystem. On land, we’ve felt and seen it during what’s been the warmest winter on record.

Echo, a UW-Milwaukee Freshwater Sciences graduate student, teaches young people at the K-12 level about freshwater systems and conservation through their underwater performances as Mermaid Echo.

The Waukesha Water Utility began pumping treated lake water purchased from the city of Milwaukee.

Famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted designed the Lake Park. He included a short, curvy road that cuts through a ravine. The picturesque drive links Lincoln Memorial Dr. below to Lake Drive above. Drivers haven’t been able to traverse the ravine for nearly a decade.