Lake Erie, painted by its own current
Nobody painted this. It is one hour of Lake Erie's surface current, October 10, 2026 at 2 a.m., from NOAA's forecast model of the lake.
Every stroke on the water follows the direction the water was moving. Pale strokes are the fastest water in the lake that hour and deep blue is the slowest. Each star sits at the centre of an eddy, a place where the current was turning in a circle, and the orange moon is the strongest one. The lights along the shore are real towns, with Buffalo at the far right.