Lake Michigan Summer Gale Warning

[jimh]

Here is tonight's marine forecast for northern Lake Michigan:

24NM WSW Northport MI

SHEBOYGAN WI TO PENTWATER MI NORTH
GALE WARNING IN EFFECT THROUGH LATE TONIGHT

Tonight--Northwest gales to 35 kt diminishing to 15 to 25 kt. Isolated waterspouts this evening. Scattered showers this evening, then isolated showers overnight. Waves 8 to 11 ft occasionally to 14 ft subsiding to 6 to 9 ft occasionally to 12 ft.

It won't be a good night to be offshore in northern Lake MIchigan, even in a really big boat.

[ConB]

"when the gales of November come early"

Con

[jimh]

The reference to "the gales of November" coming "early" in the Gordon LIghtfoot song is probably to first ten days or two weeks of the month. Historically the most damaging storms on the Great Lakes have occurred on the dates of November 9, 10, 11, and 12:

--Great Lakes Storm of 1913: November 9, 1913

--the Edmund Fitzgerald storm: November 10, 1975

--the Armistice Day Storm: November 11 and 12, 1940

And just outside of that window, the CARL D BRADLEY sank on November 18, 1958 in an intense Lake Michigan storm.

A retired NOAA meteorologist gave a lecture about 25-years ago at a meeting of the U.S. Power Squadron that I attended. He had collected a lot of water and air temperature data for the Great Lakes, and he noted that the maximum difference in air temperature (colder) than water temperature (warmer) occurred in the period of November 9, 10, and 11. The effect of the warmer water temperature was to feed energy into storms moving across that warmer water, and this was the basis for the intense storms that tend to occur during those particular days of November. He also had calculated that about 80-percent of the tonnage on the bottom of the Lakes sank in the storms that occurred on those days.

[jimh]

Summer storms are not uncommon. I recall that we were on Lake Superior at Isle Royale on Friday, September 3, 2010, when a very big storm came in, with winds of 40-knots or more. Here is the forecast from that day:

Marine Forecast issed by Environment Canada at 0300 Friday:
Western Lake Superior
GALE WARNING
Winds variable at 10-knots early this morning, 
increasing to west 15 to 20-knots, then
increasing to north 40-knots at noon.
A few showers. Risk of thunderstorms.

More at
http://continuouswave.com/sail-logs/irnp2010/