Request a Lake for LakeRadar

How we evaluate new lakes

To maintain our commitment to data integrity and avoid unverified synthetic listings, every candidate water body must satisfy our core directory criteria:

• Public Access: The lake must have at least one publicly accessible boat ramp, public shoreline park, state recreation area, or municipal launch.
• Authoritative Managing Agency: The water body must be overseen by a recognized federal (USACE, USBR, USFS, TVA), state (Department of Natural Resources, Fish & Wildlife), or municipal water conservation authority.
• National Weather Service Grid Coverage: We verify that NOAA NWS hourly forecast models (HRRR / GFS / NDFD) accurately cover the water surface coordinates.
• Hydrological Telemetry (Preferred): Where an active in-situ USGS water level or temperature sensor exists, we map the gauge directly to the lake.

What happens after you submit

Our data curation team reviews lake requests in weekly batches. Once verified against state GIS repositories and federal sensor networks:

1. The lake is mapped to its nearest National Weather Service forecast grid and centroid coordinates.
2. Active USGS telemetry stations are verified and linked to track real-time stage, water elevation, and surface temperature.
3. Curated facts (surface area, max depth, public boat ramps, game fish species) are verified against the state natural resource agency.
4. The lake is ingested into our scoring pipeline and published in our directory and respective state guide.

Need to submit a data correction for an existing lake? Visit our contact page or email us directly at info@lakeradar.com.