WELCOME TO THE SS BADGER

Navigating the Queen of the Lakes: The Captain's Toolkit Aboard the SS Badger

Abstract
The SS Badger is a unique maritime vessel, a coal-fired, steam-powered car ferry that has been traversing Lake Michigan since 1953. While her propulsion system is a celebrated piece of history, her safe navigation relies on a sophisticated suite of modern and traditional tools. Let us explore the primary instruments at the captain's disposal to guide the 410-foot vessel on its daily 60-mile, four-hour journey between Ludington, Michigan, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin, outlining their functions and operational principles.

1. Introduction
Sailing the SS Badger across Lake Michigan presents a significant navigational challenge. The lake is vast, prone to rapidly changing weather, dense fog, and can host considerable commercial and recreational traffic. The captain and bridge crew are responsible for the safety of hundreds of passengers and vehicles. To accomplish this, they employ an integrated system of electronic, magnetic, and mechanical tools, blending century-old principles with modern precision to ensure a safe and on-schedule crossing.

2. Primary Navigational Instruments
The bridge of the SS Badger is the nerve center of the ship, where information from various sources is synthesized to make critical decisions. The key tools include:

Radar (Radio Detection and Ranging): 
The Badger is equipped with modern marine radar systems, which are arguably the most critical tool for navigating in low-visibility conditions such as fog, heavy rain, or darkness.

Operation: 
The radar antenna, a rotating scanner located high on the mast, emits pulses of microwave radio energy. These pulses travel outwards, and when they strike an object (another vessel, a buoy, or the coastline), they are reflected back to the scanner. The system's computer measures the time it takes for the echo to return, calculating the distance to the object using the formula d=2c⋅t​, where d is the distance, c is the speed of light, and t is the round-trip time. The direction from which the echo returns indicates the object's bearing. This information is displayed on a screen, painting a real-time map of the surrounding area, allowing the crew to detect and track other vessels to avoid collisions.

GPS (Global Positioning System) and Chart Plotter: 
The advent of GPS has revolutionized marine navigation. The SS Badger utilizes commercial-grade GPS receivers integrated into an Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS), commonly known as a chart plotter.

Operation: 
The GPS receiver constantly communicates with a constellation of satellites orbiting the Earth. By triangulating signals from at least four satellites, the receiver can calculate the ship's precise latitude, longitude, speed over ground (SOG), and course over ground (COG) with remarkable accuracy. This position is then continuously plotted on a detailed electronic nautical chart. The captain can pre-plan the entire voyage, setting waypoints that create a digital "highway" across the lake. The system shows the ship's real-time position relative to this course line, navigational aids, and known hazards, making course-keeping highly efficient.

Gyrocompass and Magnetic Compass: 
While GPS provides position, the compass provides heading—the direction the ship's bow is pointed.

Gyrocompass Operation: 
This is the primary directional instrument. A gyrocompass contains a rapidly spinning gyroscope whose axis is cleverly constrained by gravity to align itself with the Earth's rotational axis. Therefore, it always points to true north, not magnetic north. This makes it immune to the magnetic deviation caused by the ship's own steel hull and is essential for accurate course-steering and for providing a stable heading reference to the radar and autopilot systems.

Magnetic Compass Operation: 
As a crucial backup, the Badger is also equipped with a traditional magnetic compass. It operates on the principle of a magnetized needle aligning with the Earth's magnetic field lines to point to magnetic north. The crew must apply corrections for magnetic variation (the angle between true north and magnetic north) and deviation (the ship's own magnetic field) to derive a true heading. Its independence from the ship's electrical power makes it an indispensable failsafe device.

AIS (Automatic Identification System): 
​AIS is a vital tool for collision avoidance in high-traffic areas.

Operation: 
The Badger's AIS transceiver automatically broadcasts the ship's identity, position, course, and speed to other AIS-equipped vessels in the vicinity. Simultaneously, it receives the same information from those vessels. This data is overlaid on the radar and chart plotter displays, showing not just the position of another ship, but its name, size, and intended course. This allows the bridge crew to anticipate the movements of other commercial vessels long before they become a visual or radar contact.

3. Ship Control and Monitoring
Navigating is only part of the task; controlling the massive vessel is the other.

Engine Order Telegraph (E.O.T.): 
While the bridge has direct control over the engines in modern ships, the Badger's historic steam propulsion requires a classic communication system. The captain uses the E.O.T. on the bridge to signal engine commands like "Full Ahead," "Half Astern," or "Stop" to the engine room. An engineer below acknowledges the command on their E.O.T. and manually operates the throttles of the two Skinner Unaflow steam engines to match the order. This system is a testament to the teamwork required to operate the vessel.

Weather Monitoring: 
The crew has access to up-to-the-minute weather information via satellite services and VHF radio broadcasts (NOAA Weather Radio). This includes data on wind speed and direction, wave height, and the movement of weather systems. This information is critical for ensuring passenger comfort and safety, and may lead the captain to alter course or speed to mitigate the effects of heavy seas.

4. Conclusion
The safe passage of the SS Badger across Lake Michigan is a masterful blend of old and new. The captain does not rely on a single instrument, but on the integrated use of a suite of robust tools. Radar and AIS provide the eyes for seeing through fog and darkness, GPS and the chart plotter provide the map, and the gyrocompass provides the unerring sense of direction. Backed by the reliability of the magnetic compass and managed through the classic teamwork of the Engine Order Telegraph, these systems empower the captain to confidently command the historic steamship. This fusion of 21st-century satellite technology and 20th-century steam power ensures the "Queen of the Lakes" continues to be a safe and reliable fixture on Lake Michigan. Sources ​

SS BADGER 1875

SS BADGER TODAY

Costs outweighed flood fears
Officials worried about youth camps but rejected warning system along river.

​By JESUS JIMÉNEZ, MARGARITA BIRNBAUM, DANNY HAKIM and MIKE BAKER • The New York Times

KERRVILLE, TEXAS - Eight years ago, in the aftermath of yet another river flood in the Texas Hill Country, officials in Kerr County debated whether more needed to be done to build a warning system along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

A series of summer camps along the river were often packed with children. For years, local officials kept them safe with a word-of-mouth system: When floodwaters started raging, upriver camp leaders warned those downriver of the water surge coming their way.

But was that enough? Officials considered supplementing the system with sirens and river gauges, along with other modern communications tools. "We can do all the water-level monitoring we want, but if we don't get that information to the public in a timely way, then this whole thing is not worth it," said Tom Moser, a Kerr County commissioner at the time.

In the end, little was done.
When catastrophic floodwaters surged through Kerr County last week, there were no sirens or early flooding monitors. Instead, there were text alerts that came late for some residents and were dismissed or unseen by others.

The death toll surpassed 100 on Monday as search-and-rescue teams continued to wade into swollen rivers and use heavy equipment to untangle trees as part of the massive search for missing people.

Authorities overseeing the search for flood victims said they will wait to address questions about weather warnings and why some summer camps did not evacuate ahead of the flooding that killed at least 104.
The officials spoke only hours after the operators of Camp Mystic, a century-old all-girls Christian summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, announced that they lost 27 campers and counselors to the floodwaters.

Kerr County officials said Monday 10 campers and one counselor are still missing.

Searchers have found the bodies of 84 people, including 28 children, in the county that is home to Camp Mystic and several other summer camps, officials said.

With additional rain on the way, more flooding threatened saturated parts of central Texas. Authorities said the death toll was sure to rise.
'Flash flood alley'

The rural county of a little more than 50,000 people, in a part of Texas known as "flash flood alley," contemplated installing a flood warning system in 2017, but it was rejected as too expensive. The county, which has an annual budget of about $67 million, lost out on a bid at the time to secure a $1 million grant to fund the project, county commission meeting minutes show.

As recently as a May budget meeting, county commissioners were discussing a flood warning system being developed by a regional agency as something that they might be able to make use of.

But in a recent interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said that local residents had been resistant to new spending.

"Taxpayers won't pay for it," he said, adding that he didn't know if people might reconsider now.

The idea of a flood warning system was broached in 2015, in the aftermath of a deadly flood in Wimberley, Texas, about 75 miles east of Kerrville, the Kerr County seat.

The Guadalupe River Basin is one of the most dangerous regions in the United States when it comes to flash floods.

Ordinary floods from heavy rainstorms occur regularly, inundating streets and threatening structures as floodwaters gradually rise. The region is also prone to flash floods, which can occur with little to no warning.

People living near the Guadalupe in Kerr County may have little time to seek higher ground, especially when flash floods come through late at night when people are asleep. In 1987, a rapidly rising Guadalupe River swept away a school bus carrying teens from a church camp, killing 10 of them.

Avantika Gori, a Rice University professor who is leading a federally funded project to improve flood resilience in rural Texas counties, said that flood warning systems are often simple networks of rain gauges or stream gauges that are triggered when rain or floodwaters exceed a certain level.

The gauges can then be used to warn those at risk of flooding, whether by text message, which may not be effective in areas with spotty cellphone service; notifications broadcast on TV and radio; or sometimes through a series of sirens.

More complex systems use forecasts from the National Weather Service to predict rainfall and model what areas might be subject to flooding, Gori said.

After the 2015 floods, an improved monitoring system was installed in the Wimberley area, and cell towers are now used to send out notices to all cellphones in the area.

Budget concerns
Moser, the former commissioner, visited Wimberley after its new system was in place, and then led efforts to have a flood warning system in Kerr County. His proposal would have included additional water detection systems and a system to alert the public, but the project never got off the ground, largely because of budget concerns.
"It sort of evaporated," Moser said. "It just didn't happen."

One commissioner at the time, H.A. "Buster" Baldwin, voted against a $50,000 engineering study, according to a news account at the time, saying, "I think this whole thing is a little extravagant for Kerr County, with sirens and such."

Moser said it was hard to tell if a flood warning system would have prevented further tragedy in Kerr County during Friday's flood, given the extraordinary circumstance of the flooding, which came suddenly after an intense period of rain. But he said he believed that such a system could have had some benefit.  "I think it could have helped a lot of people," Moser said.

According to a transcript from a Kerr County Commissioners' Court meeting in 2017, officials discussed how even with additional water level sensors along the Guadalupe River, the county would still need a way to alert residents if water levels were rising dangerously fast.

Sirens, which are used across Texas to alert residents about tornadoes, were considered by county officials as a way to alert people who live along the river about any flooding.

"With all the hills and all, cell coverage is not that great in some areas in Hill Country," Moser said, adding that a series of sirens might have provided people in vulnerable areas sufficient time to flee.

Moser retired as a Kerr County commissioner in 2021. But he said last week's flooding there should be taken as a warning.

"I think there's going to be a lot of places in the United States that will look at this event that happened in Kerr County and determine what could be done," Moser said. "I think things should come out of this. It should be a lesson learned."

Current city officials Sunday did not discuss the earlier deliberations over warning systems. Dalton Rice, the Kerrville city manager, sidestepped a question about the effectiveness of local emergency notifications, telling reporters at a news conference that it was "not the time to speculate."

Gori said that the decision not to install warning systems in the past has for many Texas counties come down to cost.

"If the county had a flood warning system in place, they would have fared much better in terms of preparedness, but most rural counties in Texas simply do not have the funds to implement flood warning systems themselves," she said in an email.

'We are essentially blind'
The county is hardly unique in facing challenges.

"Rural counties are extremely data-scarce, which means we are essentially blind when it comes to identifying areas that are prone to flooding," Gori said.

Texas has a growing backlog of flood management projects, totaling some $54 billion across the state. The state flood plan of the Texas Water Development Board called on lawmakers to dedicate additional funding to invest in potentially lifesaving infrastructure.

But lawmakers have so far allocated only a fraction of the money needed for flood projects through the state's Flood Infrastructure Fund, about $669 million so far, even as state lawmakers this year approved $51 billion in property tax cuts.

Kerr County, in its earlier discussions about a warning system, had explored along with other members of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority the possibility of applying for financial support through the infrastructure fund. But the authority dropped the idea after learning that the fund would provide only about 5% of the money needed for the project.

During last week's flooding, despite the text notifications that warned of rapidly rising waters, some residents were unsure how seriously to take the flood warnings because they are not unusual in that part of the state.

Linda Clanton, a retired schoolteacher who lives on the outskirts of Kerrville, said she did not know how bad the flooding had become until her sister called and woke her with the news at 8:30 a.m. Friday. The next day, she was among several people taking in the widespread destruction and piles of debris caused by the floodwaters at Louise Hays Park, along the Guadalupe River on the west side of town.

She said she couldn't be sure that even sirens would have been useful in warning people about the fast-moving water.

"We are all spread out in these hills and the trees," she said. "If we had a siren here in town, nobody but town people would hear it," she added. "You'd have to have sirens all over the place, and that's a lot of money and a lot of things to go wrong."
​
This story contains material from the Associated Press.

Website hosting national climate reports goes dark ​ Federal law requires data to be provided. NEWS SERVICES

​The government website that hosted the federal government's national climate reports, which are mandated by legislation, went offline Monday afternoon.

The website was also one of the main federal sources of information on climate change.

Since 2000, the federal government has regularly published comprehensive reports on how greenhouse gas emissions are changing climate and affecting human health, agriculture, fisheries, water supplies, transportation, energy production and other aspects of the U.S. economy.

The five published reports had been available at globalchange.gov, but that address stopped working Monday afternoon.  It now displays a "this site can't be reached" error message.

The Global Change Research Act of 1990 requires an assessment of climate change to be provided to the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies every four years. Previous National Climate Assessments remain available on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's online archive. They will also be on NASA's website, said Bethany Stevens, a NASA press secretary. The White House did not respond to a request for a comment.

"They're public documents. It's scientific censorship at its worst," said Peter Gleick, a California water and climate scientist who was one of the authors of the first National Climate Assessment in 2000.

"This is the modern version of book burning."
​In early April, the Trump administration cut funding for future editions of the reports, and later that month, the authors for the next assessment were dismissed. Work on the sixth assessment, scheduled to come out in early 2028, had already begun when the funds and support were cut.

The last climate assessment, which came out in 2023, is used by state and local governments, as well as private companies, to help prepare for the effects of climate-related events including heat waves, floods and droughts.

"This is scientific information that the American taxpayers paid for, and it's their right to have it," said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University who was an author of four previous versions of the climate assessment report. "It's information that I, as a scientist, can say is absolutely critical to making good decisions for the future, whether you're a farmer, a homeowner, a business owner, a city manager, or anyone really who wants to ensure a safe and resilient future for themselves and for their children."

Hayhoe said the website's many resources had included an interactive atlas of projected changes in hot and cold days, rainfall amounts and other effects per degree of warming.

"Climate is changing faster than any time in human history, and we know that if we don't adapt, if we don't build resilience into all of our systems — our food and water systems, our infrastructure and our health systems — that we will suffer the consequences," Hayhoe said.
She said the National Climate Assessments have helped "bridge the physiological distance" for Americans.

"It tells people in your region, here is what is already happening and here is what is going to happen, and here is how it is affecting your home, your insurance rates, your water, your food, the plants and animals that you see around you," she said.

Until Monday, the website globalchange.gov made available more than 200 publications.

They included the research program's yearly reports to Congress and studies on the Arctic, agriculture and human health. A few were republished reports from other organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The site also hosted dozens of webpages, educational podcasts and videos on topics including sea level rise, greenhouse gases, biodiversity and drought.

Previous versions of the website can still be found using the nonprofit Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which keeps snapshots of sites to help track changes.

The shutdown of the website comes after the Trump administration also took down another site, climate.gov, which had been maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That occurred after much of the staff that had worked on the site were reportedly dismissed.

(The climate.gov website now redirects users to noaa.gov/climate.) Gleick said the new NOAA website is a "pale substitute" for the extensive information that was previously available.

He said he believes the removal of websites with scientific research on global warming, driven by fossil fuels and rising levels of greenhouse gases, appears aimed at hiding the risks from the public.

Hayhoe and other climate scientists said they still don't know what the Trump administration's plans are for the next congressionally required report.

"The deeper threat to the country is that we won't do the new assessments that are necessary to understand the latest research on climate threats to the country," Gleick said. "It seems like anything climate related is being either cut to the bone or completely eliminated, with no assessment of its value or importance."

This story contains material from the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.