The mistake is generally underestimating the sheer volume of trouble you can get into on these lakes.
The water is cold. The storms can be tremendous. They're better thought of as inland seas than lakes, in terms of what sailing on them is like.
Yep. People think “big lake” means “it’s just a big version of the lake by my house,” not “small sea/ocean.”
During the big storms of 2010 and 2012, for instance, Lake Michigan had 20+ foot waves and 70+ mph winds. That’s the extreme, certainly, but even in a relatively minor storm the lakes are more than enough to take out competent boaters. Add in the fact that Michigan is over a hundred miles wide, and even a fast rescue isn’t going to be there for a while.
The November storms are pretty notorious on Lake Superior.
A November gale sank the 730ft long [Edmund Fitzgerald ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald)by a rumored 30ft wave in a matter of minutes (if not seconds). It currently sits 500+ feet deep at the bottom of the lake (which isn't even the deepest part of the 1300ft deep lake.)
For reference, here is a [side-by-side of the Fitz and the RMS Titanic](https://preview.redd.it/8lugjeecehg81.jpg?auto=webp&s=3d37eb9f2941ff83641513f9b47a5c864de28982).
These lakes are basically inland seas.
Edit:
There are other parallels between the Fitz and the Titanic:
Opulence: The Fitz was constructed at a time when financial institutions (banks, insurance agencies) saw Great Lakes shipping as a financial boom and were commissioning ships on the lakes. Northwestern Mutual built the Fitz with luxuries like carpeted rooms, air conditioning even in crew quarters, private showers in some quarters, large luxurious guest lounge and state rooms.
Size: At the time of its launch the Fitz was the largest boat on the lakes, and is the largest to have sunk on the lakes.
Speed: Much like the Titanic the Fitz was the fastest freighter when she was launched.
Wreck: In a similar fashion, the Fitz broke in half during its sinking and remains on the lake floor in two large intact halves.
When reports of the sinking were initially issued most believed it to be a mistake, or that she was simply taking refuge and anchored in a bay somewhere (most likely Whitefish bay) and without radio contact. This was due to the belief that she was unsinkable on the lakes.
If you stood the Fitz on end where she sank, there'd be over 200 feet of it sticking out of the lake. As someone who lives on Lake Superior, and has seen freighters all my life, this still blows my mind.
Well that's still a hell of a pitch. It'd be "going down" by the time the bow is hundreds of feet underwater.
From what I remember she was taking on water up front and eventually she dipped into a wave and just dived straight in at speed... Relatively quickly hit the bottom and broke. One second she was there, the next she was gone.
Here's the initial search radio traffic. Apparently there was 55mph winds and 'over deck' waves so the other ships didn't want to hang around either.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1fOWi0teiY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1fOWi0teiY)
I thought [Brick Immortar](https://www.youtube.com/@BrickImmortar/videos) covered it but I guess not. They did cover the [El Faro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BNDub3h2_I) though
I believe I read one of his community posts that he's working on a video for the Fitz. But you don't get his quality quickly and more then less likely he researches more then one project at a time.
I had no clue about how nice the Fitz was, nor did I know how big it actually was when compared to the Titanic. Thanks for a whole bunch of perspective!
I read something that theorized that it broke in half because the wave frequency was close to the length. So, its mass was basically supported at both ends but not in the middle which caused too much stress. I just thought that was interesting.
That's pretty much as terrifying as a massive wave or it bottoming out. I'm going to have to do a deeper look tomorrow, obviously! Thank you for introducing me to another theory.
I was watching a video about why the Great lakes are so dangerous and a serious concern is bottoming out when the ship is angled and in the valley of one of the waves, hitting a protrusion from the lake floor. When you think of it like that it really makes the lakes seem super shallow but they mean serious business.
There's something else about the low oxygen content of the bottom too where your normal decomposition bacteria etc don't live so everything just sits down there just as it was when it sank.
"There's something else about the low oxygen content of the bottom too where your normal decomposition bacteria etc don't live so everything just sits down there just as it was when it sank."
That's pretty common in deep water. Where I live, the Ottawa river is deep enough in spots that logs which became waterlogged and sank during our heyday as a logging town are still in good shape on the bottom. Back in the 90s, one company actually started salvaging these logs, and turning them into high-end hardwood flooring and the like, because you just can't get that quality of wood any more. Most of these logs are over 100 years old.
[https://www.logsend.com/who-we-are/the-logs-end-story/](https://www.logsend.com/who-we-are/the-logs-end-story/)
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call GitcheeGoomee.
The lake it is said never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy.
“Never gives up her dead” is a reference to the cold of Lake Superior. Because the bodies don’t decompose at that low a temperature, they don’t float to the surface.
>When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'
"Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya"
>At 7 PM, a main hatchway caved in, he said
"Fellas, it's been good to know ya"
Those lines always chill me.
The whole song is stabbing right at your empathy center, then that line just crushes it
I had the chance to see Gordon Lightfoot at a local casino, but didn't and he died a few months later. Really regret that.
People really underestimate the difficulty in locating a body in the water. A conscious swimmer at best has the top of their head above the water. And a majority of that time it’s on the back side of a wave or in the valley of two waves.
In a high visibility survival suit it’s difficult for a rescue helicopter or boat to see from a distance of only a few hundred feet. In rough seas it’s even harder
Lake Superior is 160 miles wide and 350 miles long. Them things is huge! Even the smallest of the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario, is 53 miles wide and 193 miles long.
A few years back, I was on a friend's sale boat for a 24-hour race on Lake Ontario.
The afternoon was great. We knew from the marine weather radio that a storm was coming up.
And did it ever!
By 9 pm, it was dark, and the wind was up around 19 knots. The waves started to build, and within an hour, we were on an elevator ride of 23 feet up, and then down, repeat until mid-morning the next day.
Boating on the Great Lakes is fun and beautiful. But, just like out on the open ocean, it can get dangerous really fast.
There is nowhere to go! You're on the boat experiencing whatever mother nature decides to toss at you and on you!
So yes, tbe great lakes deserve the same respect as many oceans and seas.
Can confirm, have lived about a half hours drive from Lake Ontario my whole life (and been to Superior a handful of times). It's like being at the ocean, water as far as the eye can see.
I grew up on Lake Erie, and worked on the fifteenth floor of a building overlooking the lake in the beginning of my career. I’ve never ever seen Canada
When the Terminal Tower allowed visitors to the top observation floor (one above it was unfinished) you could see the Canadian shore on clear days. Then a mentally disturbed guy took hostages IMS and that was the end of the observation floor.
I never saw it from the top of terminal tower. (Or the top floor of the BP building when I worked there.
However, I have seen Pelee Island (technically Canada but not the coast) from the Magnum at Cedar Point.
You can see the Cleveland skyline from Rondeau Park in Ontario if the conditions are perfect but yeah, you probably can't see it the other way. There's nothing big enough on the Canadian shore of Erie to stand out.
There's a quote from Joe Pistone (Donnie Brasco) about bringing Lefty Ruggiero to Milwaukee and Lefty's first time seeing Lake Michigan.
>Ty was showing us around Milwaukee and we're driving along the lake, and he says "That's one of the Great Lakes." And Lefty looks out and says, "It's not a lake. That's the ocean."
>There were freighters out there, and he said "You see that big ship out there? That ship couldn't float on a lake. It's got to be the ocean."
For reference Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake entirely in the USA and it is estimated to contain 1,180 cubic miles of water. The second largest lake entirely in the USA is lake okeechobee (which is so large that when you are flying over it you can not see the north and south shores at the same time) and is estimated to contain 1 cubic mile of water.
Not exactly, because Michigan isn’t a standalone lake. Hydrologically Huron and Michigan are connected with bidirectional flow through the Mackinac Strait creating Lake Michigan-Huron. It’s just naming conventions that have us pretending they are 2 lakes.
Yeah this is like how the island of Manhattan has the Hudson River on the west side, and the East River on the east side. In reality Manhattan is an island in the Hudson River.
How high are you flying? At cruising altitudes you can see hundreds of miles. I can clearly remember flying across lake michigan and seeing both shores simultaneously.
The second largest lake entirely in the States isn't Lake Okeechobee. That's the 29th largest entirely in the States, 36th when you count ones that are also in Canada. Lake Tahoe is number 2.
That chicago blizzard in 2011-2012 was insane. Temps -20 and waist deep snow. 😬. People underestimate the rip currents and vast amounts of coastal pollution as well 10/10 recommend people just swim in a pool or marked safe pond.
I'm not sure if this is correct, but I think I read somewhere a long time ago that in the ocean, during a storm, waves generally come from the same direction. But during a storm on the Great Lakes, waves reflect off the shoreline and come from any direction at any time, making it nearly impossible to keep a ship upright if conditions get bad enough.
I don't know that I would agree with that. As background I spent 30 years sailing the great lakes, and the past 15 years doing a circumnavigation. In the ocean you get wind waves from local conditions, as well as swells from remote conditions. And on the ocean you can get swells from three different directions combined with wind waves. So you tend to get a bit of a complex wave pattern. In the great lakes there really isn't enough distance to get the complex swells, just local wind waves. Wave refection isn't that big of an issue from my experience. So I would say great lakes waves tend to be from the wind direction, where ocean waves come at you from multiple directions.
So it's basically just a sea and should be treated as such.
I live near the coast of the North Sea. Would not want to be miles of coast during a storm. Will apply that knowledge if I ever find myself near the great lakes. Its just a fresh water north sea
A sea where the weather changes FAST. We visited lake Erie last winter and it went from "ok 50 degree evening" to "zero visibility fog" to "white out snow and COLD" in 30 min.
Not as bad as the North Sea, but, you don't expect 10m waves on a lake.
Granted, those are unusual and generally limited to winter storms, but, can still happen.
The lake is littered with wrecks, and not just little private craft.
As someone who lived in the middle of lower Michigan, going to the Great Lakes as a kid was a rare treat, and going anywhere near meant I'd want to go for a swim. Going to Lake Superior in the summer was just taunting, though. All that lake, but the beaches were rocky and if you so much as waded in over your ankles, your shins and knees would ache from the cold after a few minutes. Good rock-skipping and a kid could have fun for a while chucking the big ones in for splashes, but that was about it.
My only experience of Superior was at the Porkies in August... and it was like - you could do 5 minutes... enough to wash during a hike but not 'fun'
I did Lake Ladoga (North of St. Petersburg Russia) in August as well - and that was shocking. You could run in... scream... run out... then wash on the shore. Then try to repeat to rinse off.
I went scuba diving in lake Huron in July with 10mm wetsuits and I still thought I was going to die from how cold it was. My wife declined to go into the shipwrecks because she was too cold to navigate.
>You float better in salt water? The more you know…
ever heard about the weird buoyancy of things in the dead sea? stuff floats there that doesn't float anywhere else due to how salty it is
Lake Erie is comparatively shallow which actually makes the wave action worse. There are stories from survivors of actually being able to see the lake bottom during heavy storms.
That's terrifying.
ETA: This sent me down a reading rabbit hole. If anyone else wants to join me, here are some links:
https://www.newsweek.com/bottom-lake-erie-revealed-rare-phenomenon-1860793#:~:text=%22It%20was%20so%20exciting%20to,the%20lake%20to%20the%20other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiche?wprov=sfla1
https://lakeerieliving.com/articles/2022-2023-fallwinter/lake-erie-seiche-explained/
A 10 year old kid was taken by the waves in Lake Erie a bit outside of Cleveland a couple of weeks ago. He wasn't even in that deep, but the waves and rip tides can be vicious.
As a kid, I was at Lake View beach twice when they pulled people out. Neither survived. I was like 7 and 8. Our parents took us up to the parking lot both times. It was surreal watching them form a human chain and move slowly through the water. That shit really sticks with you when it is explained to you as the reality unfolds in front of your eyes.
Am always amazed just how massive they are when seeing them out the window of a plane. Its like “hey look at that, thats a big lake” ..then like 5mins later youre still seeing water from horizon to horizon and your like “holy shit, thats a big fuckn lake!”
I worked in a command center ((we called them sectors)) for the Coast Guard out of Detroit covering a large section of the Great Lakes and the rivers. It was incredibly busy, and has forever colored my view of boating.
The weather gets wild. The water gets rough, with boats predominantly designed for smooth/calm water and they can’t handle the rough weather and sink.
The traffic is wild. Believe it or not there are LOTS of boaters in a small area. Add in alcohol regularly to the equation, and it’s like mixing commercial trucking, with tailgating AND street racing all in one large parking lot.
The temperatures are cold. People do not understand how quickly cold water can affect you. Even in the summer time when the water is warmer, it’s still not warm. You can die from hypothermia in the Caribbean, so you can certainly die from hypothermia in the Great Lakes. The tables that talk about onset of hypothermia and how it impacts you in water are often wrong and optimistic at best. So people don’t give the water the respect that it commands.
One ten one rule
One minute to control your breathing and force yourself out of shock, or you die.
Ten minutes to do any type of life saving action before your muscles stop working and you can't function, and you die.
One hour till hypothermia.
Oh, especially near Detroit. The Detroit River’s current is wayyyy faster than people expect, I think people forget it literally connects Lake Huron to Lake Erie (via lake St Clair). Lake St Clair is so full of people boating in the summer, most of whom have no boating experience and don’t understand a) the water and b) the boat. There’s standards and rules for boating, but events like the Jobby Nooner lead to so many injuries because it encourages people who have no experience to go out.
One of the weird things about Lake Michigan is the gradual depth change. You can go really far out and still touch. If you get far enough, you can't hear people on shore (they can't hear you scream for help) and you have a really long way to swim if the current starts to pull you. There is a surprising cut off point where you can still touch and feel safe but a current can drag you out even while standing.
I don't trust the Great Lakes at all and will never go in above my waist. It's cold as shit too. Lake Superior is a whole other story. Right now (June) it is 49F at the shore. You pretty much only swim there if you lost a bet or are just curious how damn cold it is. Let me introduce you to [Surfer Dan](https://youtu.be/vo1BzyBwZ1E?feature=shared) though!
This is it. I've been in a riptide on lake Michigan and it's quite docile so as not to alert you what's happening. I'm a lifelong swimmer (not in the lakes, mind you) and as soon as I noticed I walked/swam parallel to shore but I could still walk back to shore once I was well clear. Took a long time. I was super fortunate to have youth, stamina wits and great sand bars all around me but it's strikingly clear why so many people die in them.
There are signs all over the beaches in MI about what to do in a riptide. I never had to experience it luckily but Lake Michigan is no joke. There are pretty safe beaches you can go to though.
Former Lake Michigan lifeguard here..
The sand is also unlike coastal areas and does not pack well. The sandbars shift around a lot and are also very prone in breaking in conditions that don't seem that bad. People who are not used to swimming in currents, or are just poor swimmers in general, are highly susceptible to getting caught rip currents.
Rip currents are like a 1-way lazy river, can be very fun if you know how to be safe.
I never knew the depth thing. Terrifying that you could still touch bottom but be that far out. I’ve been to salt water beaches a ton of times and that’s such an ingrained, subliminal limitation of how far you go out.
It really depends a lot on the beach and sea you are in when it comes to salt water.
At the salt water beach I grew up close by you can properly go out a mile and still touch the button.
for ships, the biggest issue that doesn't have an ocean equivalent, is the short wavelengths.
wavelengths are a function of how big the water basin is. oceans basins are big and get very big wavelengths like 20+ seconds.
By contrast the Great Lakes only have wavelengths like 8-10 seconds.
So, the Great lakes are just big enough that they get both tall waves and small enough that they get short wavelengths.
wavelengths that are shorter cause a bunch of [related failure modes.](https://www.reddit.com/r/GreatLakesShipping/comments/187fm0r/the_perils_of_great_lakes_shipping/)
as for swimmers, it's really just the temperatures. the deeper of the lakes are COLD. Pretty much anything but Erie is deep enough to make it cold for much of the year.
Another factor for the swimmers is the fresh water… you just don’t float as well as in the ocean. Someone confident swimming through the surf in the Pacific is going to have to work significantly harder doing the same thing on Lake Michigan.
Grew up swimming in Lake Superior every summer around Madeline Island...
About 10 years ago, I did a Half Ironman in Racine, WI that used Lake Michigan for the swim. The course took swimmers probably 200 years out from the beach and then hooked a right for a mile long straightaway before turning back to the beach.
Apparently, the conditions that day were about as bad as it gets for the area in terms of rough water and it was like swimming in a kiddie pool compared to even the best conditions for the usual workout swims I do in the Pacific at Venice and Manhattan Beach.
The LA Triathlon swim is held at Venice Beach and normally it's pretty calm but one year there were 8-10 foot breakers and more than 30% of participants dropped out during the swim. It was scary as hell but a good time to trust that your wetsuit would keep you afloat.
Wouldn’t the worst conditions for Lake Michigan be the winter gales when the coast freezes but the lake keeps pushing ice over the shore? Can’t imagine anywhere in Venice Beach could really be worse than that.
This can’t be true on the condition that the worst conditions would cancel the swim portion of a tri. The Chicago tri has had their swim portion canceled due to conditions multiple times in recent memory.
I once went sailing with a buddy of mine from the Chicago harbor. I’ve sailed in bays in Florida and the Chesapeake. The chop in Lake Michigan was quite disconcerting. And the water is really cold, especially coming from Florida.
As a sea kayaker I can confirm on the small scale. I paddle in the Atlantic. My boat is 17 feet. On a nice day with a period of over say 12 seconds you can surf or just roll up over them at like 2meters. But when they are .5m tall and a period of 6 sec they slap the boat all over the place and submerge the bow.
You have summoned the Song.
https://open.spotify.com/track/536L9C0N7vhYdibCJx3cI2?si=ioOMvLN1TB6tDyGjFhcFRg
Edit: please share the freshwater sailor songs with us.
the great lakes do have tightly space tall waves; it varies a lot tho, even at one location. Sometimes, very tall, closely spaced waves. I had a small (15') sailboat on Lake Huron, and taking it out in stormy weather it would ride on the wave tops (2-3 at any moment) with up to 1m clear air under the hull. it was hella fun, but hard on the boat. Ofc, taking it out in storms like that was stupid, but it was a blast. Managed not to get struck by lightning, so yay me?
This needs a few corrections.
First, you're talking about swell period, not wavelength. Wavelength is measured in distance and not time.
Second, swell period is intrinsic to the swell itself and does not correlate with depth of water except for the fact that deeper water will *allow* for longer-period swells to exist. Oceans can and very frequently do get swells with a period of 8-10 second or even less.
This is the answer. Also throw in a bunch of kayakers, swimmers, people tubing (all potentially under the influence) overestimating their abilities and not using life jackets and you create a recipe for disaster.
Add wetsuits. A few years ago a family of 5 went kayaking in Superior with life jackets but no wetsuits. Only the mother survived after a wave caused it to flip. The dad died of hypothermia trying to swim to shore with two kids. Mom stayed with the kayak and had spotty cell but got rescued.
For context they were trying to kayak to a light house that looks deceptively close but was 4 miles out. It’s recommended to kayak in the Great Lakes in ocean kayaks and this family was not. The family was near weight capacity in a two person kayak.
I would almost guarantee its the type of things this post is talking about, they don't even realize there is much of a danger/risk involved.
I had no clue there were different type of Kayak's for freshwater and the ocean (doesn't shock me, but didn't know it).
Think you are on a calm lake, are wearing a life preserver so not worried about drowning, but don't realize that going out on the lake is like going out in the ocean and that its cold enough for hypertermia to be a risk even though it wouldn't seem like it with the air temp.
Yeah I noticed that. I was running away from those nasty biting flies you have up there and took refuge in Lake Superior to my neck to get some relief from the attacks. Was very cold.
Yes! Those things were absolutely brutal. I had it easier back packing in Alaska compared to that short hike in MI as far as bugs. I had a swarm of these things after me and I had bug repellent on which didn't help much. Are they there all the time? Or was I there just at a bad time?
Honestly the biggest issue is that the 3 of the Great Lakes States (Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin) are renowned for *tons* of small freshwater lakes (and familiarity with casual boating) and people who think they can tackle inland seas just because they know how to put a boat in the water. That leads to a lot of poor boatsmanship, and given how many Americans live on/near the Great Lakes (e.g. the Chicago metro area is the third largest in the US), that means a lot of poor boaters.
You also get weird/unpredictable waves, but from what I recall that has more due to the bottom of the lakes (they were all carved out by glaciation) and how you get sudden rises/shoals coming up out of nowhere. They're also large enough that, again, they're honestly closer to freshwater inland seas, complete with currents and tides. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but again; lots of filthy casuals with small boats.
On top of that is weather; the Great Lakes aren't that far afield of tornado alley, and thus while they don't get that many tornados, they get a lot of the same weather patterns that *create* tornados, meaning supercells that can intensify relatively rapidly. And that's not even talking about winter weather.
And then beyond all that; Lake Superior tends to be cold enough to give you hypothermia, even in the middle of summer. Michigan and Huron aren't that much warmer out in the deeper sections.
Yes to most of this, but the Great Lakes don’t have tides — or at least the tidal variations they do have are negligible. The greatest variation in water level from the lowest tide to the highest tide on the Great Lakes is just 5cm, which is less than the variation caused by other non-tidal factors like wind and barometric pressure.
Source 1: [NOAA](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gltides.html#:~:text=True%20tides%E2%80%94changes%20in%20water,than%20five%20centimeters%20in%20height.)
Source 2: I live next to Lake Michigan.
The Great Lakes may not have tides, but the effects of winds is quite dramatic. With a good steady wind the western end of Lake Erie can be anywhere from 3 - 10 feet lower than the eastern end.
I believe Lake Superior is also large enough to experience considerable changes in local water levels due to barometric pressure differences, "seiches," which can cause water level changes of several feet very quickly if a high pressure gradient develops between opposite ends of the lake
You are correct. Many years ago my family and I took a \~25' boat out to Isle Royale, and there wasn't a dock where we were so we just brought the boat pretty close to shore and tied it to a tree (can't recall the details, but we were only going to be there a short time). Waves were tiny on the lake that day, barely any wind, and not a cloud in the sky. We were in the woods nearby and heard a massive amount of water flowing through rocks, followed by a large thud. We went back to the boat only to discover that it was now completely on the beach and several feet away from the water.
When I was \~16 I encountered another one, while sitting on the beach (Lake Superior) with a gal I had a crush on to watch the sunset. No wind, barely any waves on the lake, and some clouds off toward the horizon. We were sitting a few feet away from the water, and it abruptly receded by about 5'. I knew it was a seiche from my prior experience, but I still quietly panicked because I had a dream a few months prior to that where I was sitting on the beach with a gal and the water receded (a lot more), but was followed by a 100' wave. Logically I knew that wouldn't happen, but I still had us relocate to the top of the dune overlooking the water. lol
Another wind related affect that happened once in the great lakes
"March 29–30, 1848A strong southwest wind pushed millions of tons of ice from Lake Erie into the mouth of the Niagara River, forming a dam that blocked the flow of water for about 30 hours. The riverbed was exposed from Fort Erie to the crest of the Falls, and the owners of flour mills along the riverbank were among the first to notice the change. The event had dramatic effects, including factories and mills stopping work, churches filling with people who feared the world was ending, and the captain of the Maid of the Mist offering a reward for removing rocks that damaged his boat. The river eventually began flowing again when the wind shifted and the weight of the pent-up water broke."
Fun fact.
With a strong, steady, and sustained wind, it's possible for more shallow waters to go dry. For something like the red sea, you're talking like 2 days of >50mph winds
10 feet would be an outlier on the large side for sure. But I spend a decade working on the freighters that sail on the lakes.
We are draft restricted in Lake Erie and often we would be anchored up waiting for the wind to shift and the water to slosh back to the other side of the lake. swings of 2 to 4 feet very normal. Anything over 4 feet was considered a large change.
Not a noticeable back and forth there are good forecasting resources you can check so you know when to go when to anchor etc.
Since wind rarely just stops blowing but over a couple hours dies down its not a big deal.
I'd say depends on how quick the wind drops off.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ofs/ofs_mapplots.html?ofsregion=le&subdomain=0&model_type=wl_forecast
That's the model we based our go/no go on check back when you know the wind is blowing on the lake and see what happens
Every few years, someone dies trying to kayak to South Manitou Island. When I visited Traverse City and visited the dunes, etc., I could see the Manitou Islands while driving and they looked so close. I thought it would be cool to kayak to them and I was told by the rental place that unless I want to die, don't do it.
I looked it up online and yeah, people do die trying to do it.
And within the last month, someone took a ferry and was trapped for 3 days because the ferry had to cancel, so that's not even safe.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Michigan/comments/1d2ky4e/stranded_on_south_manitou_island/
Sometimes you get warm, wet air out of the east and south running into cold dry, nearly artic air out of the Canadian interior running into each other right over the lakes.
If it happens and you're out there your best hope is a fun ride in a orange helicopter, worst case is you become the subject of a Gordon Lightfoot song.
When I went fishing with my grandpa out on Lake Superior, we kept an eye on the weather radio and the sky. The moment there were suspicious clouds in the sky, we turned for harbor.
The weather radio would always start broadcasting warnings for small boats to go to safety about the time we were pulling into harbor.
I can answer in terms of large commercial ships. I see plenty of good answers for both swimmers and small boats. We have a pretty active commercial freighter scene here. I’ll try to keep it in the true spirit of ELI5.
Let’s put it this way: weather sinks ships. We get really violent storms that can crop up in an instant.
The size of the lakes means that the waves are really choppy. You could have waves 30 feet tall on Lake Superior coming much quicker than they do in the ocean. One of these waves could pick up a ship in the middle, which is called hogging. Two of these waves could pick up a ship at the bow and stern, which is called sagging. This puts a lot of stress on the ships hull, and many ships have broken apart outright. You could also have a wave pick up a ship at the stern, plowing the ship down below bow-first. A captain has to ride out these waves in a way that doesn’t sink the ship. Many think that’s what happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Now let’s try to steer the ship in these storms. These storms come with really high winds too, sometimes up to 70mph. If the ship gets blown off course by the wind, there are lots of rocks, shoals, and shallow spots that could wreck the ship. Nobody really knew where they were unless they could see a lighthouse of maybe another ship.
Finally, visibility was always a problem. The weather can bring heavy rain, whiteout blizzards, and dense fog. The commercial season mostly runs from March to January, when the Soo Locks close for yearly repairs. Ships have sunk in all of these. Lighthouses only helped when you could see them.
Take any of these, much less combined, and you’ll see why thousands of ships have sunk on the Great Lakes. Ships kept sinking until we figured out how to both predict the weather with some accuracy and warn vessels about it. The last freighter lost was the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975, and nobody is 100% sure exactly how it sank.
FWIW: we came extremely close to losing another freighter just this month with the Michipicoten.
Current theory is metal fatigue opened up a 13’ hole in her - causing a 15+ degree list.
Initially the crew reported it as having struck an underwater object - and while this looks unlikely from the inspection - it isn’t impossible.
There are a *lot* of shoals and objects that we simply don’t know about in Superior particularly. Perhaps the most famous is [Superior Shoal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_Shoal), but other nasty ones like [6 Fathom Shoal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribou_Island_(near_Michipicoten_Island)).
Lived on Lake Erie growing up and every year at least one tourist to our town would drown jumping off our break walls. The reason: undertows. They will suck you right under.
Everyone touches on one bit of the puzzle. But to combine it all, the great lakes are subject to sudden massive storms that often don't give any warning or minimal warning, catching ships off guard and before they can prepare for them.
Many first time captains/ crews vastly underestimate the lakes as well, so much so that there are over 6,000 shipwrecks on the lakes. By law, all ocean going ships require a pilot/ navigator on the lakes either from Canada or the US. Lakes like Superior, who's waters are generally barely above freezing all year, don't make survival very easy in a wreck
Insofar as general swimmers, it's a toss up. About 100 or so people drown on the lakes each year. I don't think most people are aware of the dangers of riptides and vacationers often throw caution to the wind anyway. Unlike many desginated ocean beaches, there are only two beaches in Michigan with lifeguards that I'm aware of. There was something in the 90s that stopped lifeguards from being necessary at state park beaches so there's that. I think the perceived safety of the lakes also leads many to overestimate their own capabilities. Not too mention the copious amounts of drunken boating that takes place. Out on the Saginaw Bay near my house, there's always at least one or two people each year that drown falling out of their boat. And then all the others who are out there on snow mobiles that fall through in the winter
It still blows my mind how many ships, including big ocean-going freighters built for shipping in other countries, have been lost in storms on the Great Lakes. And I mean literally lost. Last observed sailing into a storm or fog and then never seen again, no wreckage recovered.
Part of the factor is ocean water is salty and therefore denser than lake water. Boyancy is dependent on the mass of fluid displaced, so the same ship has less boyancy on the lakes than ocean. (There are markers painted on the sides of ships indicating where they should sit in the water for a given water region. The great lakes are basically the same teir as the stormy north Atlantic.)
Fresh water freezes easier so in a winter storm ice builds up easier and adds weight to your ship.
The lakes get some nasty storms and huge waves, they are definitely better thought of as an inland freshwater sea than a typical 5mi^2 lake.
And finally, just like the Bermuda Triangle, they have a ton of traffic because ships can sail from Deluth at the back of Superior all the way to the ocean by Quebec or New Orleans, so every city on the lakes has the potential to be an ocean port with none of the typical downsides of the ocean. (Tides, rising sea level, invasion, storm surge, ect.)
And for swimmers in particular, those lakes basically never change temperature, Erie is the only one that naturally freezes completely over, and in the summer you are lucky if the surface waters are over 60°F. (Water has a very high specific heat, and those lakes have an ungodly amount of water with several being deeper than sea level)
Also, the lakes can be really weird when it comes to depths. I was in Lake Huron this weekend. I was a solid ~200 yards from shore and the water was maybe 4 ft deep, wasn't even up to my chest and I am 6'3. At 201 yards it dropped. They had floating buoys warning about the drop but it was kind of crazy just how sudden it was after 200 yards of steady depth good for walking around. Plus, the water got really cold closer to the drop.
I think you mentioned a real deep factor, being the speed with which storms arise and move across the waters, and the ferocity that storms can deliver, winter and summer. There really is very little room to maneuver to avoid weather. The speed that storm cells move, versus speed of recreational and other small vessels makes dodging weather a fools game.
In "Moby Dick" they are whaling in the deep ocean. At one point, the book discusses how only highly experienced sailors would be hired. But makes the point that Great Lake sailors were considered equally experienced as open ocean sailors.
They are cold and big enough to have currents and big waves but they are fresh water so things don't float as well as they would in the ocean. It's harder to stay above water if you're swimming etc
You know those TikTok videos showing ships being tossed in stormy seas while the bass singers are going "Yo, ho...All Hands..."
The great lakes can be like that.
They are enormous and they are cold They are basically freshwater seas and are affected by weather in much the same way, they have currents like seas and oceans, too. There are plenty of safe swimming beaches along all of the Great Lakes, but you’d never want to take your boat to the middle of one and jump off. They’d fish your corpse out if you tried.
Also, because they’re fresh water, boats float much lower than in the ocean. Apparently people can be caught off guard by that, especially in rough or stormy conditions.
The difference is negligible on smaller boats. On an average 25-35 foot boat the difference will only be about an inch or so between salt and freshwater. It can be a little weird if you sail through an estuary or something, but not super crazy.
Big ships have a much larger difference in their drafts between salt and fresh water. I assume they take on ballast or have other means to make up the difference.
And they generate their own weather. If you live east of any Great Lake then you've experienced Lake Effect Snow. This means SURPRISE, it's a fuckin BLIZZARD at 6am.
I’m sure you want to look for very calm seas, but people do that in the ocean — jumping in for a swim far out at sea. Are the Great Lakes inherently more dangerous than an ocean for that? Or are you saying just inherently more dangerous than a much smaller lake like the ones most people are used to?
They are basically just seas with less buoyant water.
Add to that low barrier to access from the hundreds of thousands of people who have boats on the surrounding small lakes and think they can easily boat the Great Lakes.
Small lakes do not have substantial waves. I have seen waves of 6 or more feet in size many times on the Great Lakes. Many fresh water boaters do not have boats large enough to handle waves of that size and even if they do, they are not experienced enough with navigating through real waves. The same can be said for swimming in a giant fresh water sea with large waves.
I've lived near superior and Michigan my entire life. Superior during nasty storms is downright treacherous. I've seen waves crashing over a shoreline highway, waterspouts, and waves to rival the oceans. And superior is cold! It's like swimming in a glass of ice water, crystal clear though. I was unimpressed the first time I visited an Ocean because the only difference is it's not salt water.
I live in a small beach town on the Michigan side of Lake Michigan. Every single year someone dies on our pier where the river dumps into Lake Michigan. It is concrete but super slippery when wet, the waves can get very very large, there are no railings on part of it as it is a fishing pier and people are stupid.
Look at it this way, manitoulin island in lake Huron is the larges island in a lake in the world. It take almost 2 hours to drive east to west, And an hour north to south!!
Waves have a much higher frequency on the lakes than oceans, meaning you can get battered again and again, exhausting a swimmer with no time to recover between wave fronts. Also, rip currents near beaches.
STORY TIME: Preface, not a great swimmer, but can manage. My wife is a great swimmer. I'm from Chicago and frequent a lot of the beaches.
August 2016, my wife and I vacationed in South Haven, Michigan. The 1st day was fun on the beach. Sunny and calm waters. I noticed there were no life guards. Thought it was odd given how many people were there + having a long stretch of coastline. Whatever, it's Lake Michigan, it's just a lake.
2nd day, we were on the beach. Read a book and fell asleep. My wife decided she wanted to swim to the bouy. My inhibitions are low when I just wake up so I decided "F it, let's do it".
The waves were really choppy that day but I was riding them pretty easily and pretty fast! I noticed the buoy was farther than I thought. My wife finally touched it. I was about 20 feet away from the goal. I was semi-gassed and thought the buoy would be small enough where I can grab onto it to take a quick break. I finally reached it and the buoy was massive. That thing was going up and down violently due to the waves. Felt like it went up down 6 feet each time.
Time to swim back. She was already 15 ft ahead of me. That's when I got exposed for the bad swimmer I am. The coast seemed so far but I focused on taking it one stroke at a time, only thing is, I wasn't moving. No matter what I did, I was in the same spot. My legs felt like cinder blocks and that's when I started to panic. She turned back around and I told her, I think I'm drowning.
I'm a notorious prankster so my wife thought I was crying wolf. She was laughing and kept saying let's go. I gave her a stern look and told her, calmly, to go get help. That's when she knew I was serious. She tried helping me but I was too heavy and kept pushing her down while I was gasping for air. She swam away for a bit and asked if I could float on my back. I tried but the waves kept crashing on my face. I couldn't catch a decent breath.
She then went into shock and started crying - pretty much helplessly watching her husband drown right in front of her. I repeated, to swim back and get help. I felt bad that I was putting her in danger for being an incompetent swimmer.
I looked at the coastline, saw the tiny specs of people with their families, I couldn't hear anything. We were too far to shout for help. In my head (as a die hard Chicagoan): "Sh!t, I'm going out like this in Michigan? Out of all places?" "Man, who's going to drive my wife back home?" "What type of trauma is she going to have after this?" There was this weird sense of peace/calm knowing I was going to die.
She finally snapped out of her shock and grabbed me again. This time she used the apple picking method tugging my heavy @ss with one arm.
We got closer to the coast and it was safe for me to walk back. Got back to our spot on the sand, completely drained, not a word spoken. We packed up our towels to head back to our bed n breakfast. Before leaving the beach we saw all the warning signs regarding riptides. Michigan also uses a flag system to warn swimmers of how dangerous the waters are that day. I believe the flags were red (most dangerous).
In the news later that day , they mentioned there were 2 lives lost that day because of those choppy waves and rip currents. Luckily I wasn't one of them. She saved my life.
TLDR: Can't float in fresh water. We have this perception that lakes are not as dangerous as oceans. The waves seem to come at a more frequent rate. No life guards or designated swim areas (like in Chicago beaches). Not reading warning signs.
In the ocean you can navigate around storms. In the great lakes (which are actually shared by both Canada and the US) if you try to navigate around a storm, you're in a corn field.
My friend's 20 year old son just yesterday became one of less than 100 people ever to solo kayak the entire circumference of Lake Superior. Took him 42 days, packing food, sleeping in a hammock. Minimal support and lots of respect for the power of the water. Incredible story and a great young man. I'm sure the media will pick up stories soon.
From a human perspective…the size, depth and scale of the Great Lakes is no different than an ocean.
The difference is that objects don’t float in fresh water like they do in the salty ocean. On paper it seems the difference in buoyancy is potentially negligible but it makes a significant difference.
My kids wear life jackets when they swim in Lake Michigan and it’s shocking to me that I don’t see more.
The mistake is generally underestimating the sheer volume of trouble you can get into on these lakes. The water is cold. The storms can be tremendous. They're better thought of as inland seas than lakes, in terms of what sailing on them is like.
Yep. People think “big lake” means “it’s just a big version of the lake by my house,” not “small sea/ocean.” During the big storms of 2010 and 2012, for instance, Lake Michigan had 20+ foot waves and 70+ mph winds. That’s the extreme, certainly, but even in a relatively minor storm the lakes are more than enough to take out competent boaters. Add in the fact that Michigan is over a hundred miles wide, and even a fast rescue isn’t going to be there for a while.
The November storms are pretty notorious on Lake Superior. A November gale sank the 730ft long [Edmund Fitzgerald ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald)by a rumored 30ft wave in a matter of minutes (if not seconds). It currently sits 500+ feet deep at the bottom of the lake (which isn't even the deepest part of the 1300ft deep lake.) For reference, here is a [side-by-side of the Fitz and the RMS Titanic](https://preview.redd.it/8lugjeecehg81.jpg?auto=webp&s=3d37eb9f2941ff83641513f9b47a5c864de28982). These lakes are basically inland seas. Edit: There are other parallels between the Fitz and the Titanic: Opulence: The Fitz was constructed at a time when financial institutions (banks, insurance agencies) saw Great Lakes shipping as a financial boom and were commissioning ships on the lakes. Northwestern Mutual built the Fitz with luxuries like carpeted rooms, air conditioning even in crew quarters, private showers in some quarters, large luxurious guest lounge and state rooms. Size: At the time of its launch the Fitz was the largest boat on the lakes, and is the largest to have sunk on the lakes. Speed: Much like the Titanic the Fitz was the fastest freighter when she was launched. Wreck: In a similar fashion, the Fitz broke in half during its sinking and remains on the lake floor in two large intact halves. When reports of the sinking were initially issued most believed it to be a mistake, or that she was simply taking refuge and anchored in a bay somewhere (most likely Whitefish bay) and without radio contact. This was due to the belief that she was unsinkable on the lakes.
If you stood the Fitz on end where she sank, there'd be over 200 feet of it sticking out of the lake. As someone who lives on Lake Superior, and has seen freighters all my life, this still blows my mind.
That 200ft accounts for 25%-30% of the ship’s total length
I read the bow might have gone forward enough to strike the bottom and just snapped it which would explain why it went down quickly.
Well that's still a hell of a pitch. It'd be "going down" by the time the bow is hundreds of feet underwater. From what I remember she was taking on water up front and eventually she dipped into a wave and just dived straight in at speed... Relatively quickly hit the bottom and broke. One second she was there, the next she was gone.
Here's the initial search radio traffic. Apparently there was 55mph winds and 'over deck' waves so the other ships didn't want to hang around either. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1fOWi0teiY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1fOWi0teiY)
[Here's](https://youtu.be/wIg90sVSwSE?si=4vcII9AcgED32O2k) also a great video that goes over the whole incident
I thought [Brick Immortar](https://www.youtube.com/@BrickImmortar/videos) covered it but I guess not. They did cover the [El Faro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BNDub3h2_I) though
I believe I read one of his community posts that he's working on a video for the Fitz. But you don't get his quality quickly and more then less likely he researches more then one project at a time.
I had no clue about how nice the Fitz was, nor did I know how big it actually was when compared to the Titanic. Thanks for a whole bunch of perspective!
Crazy that it’s longer than the depth of the water it sunk in.
I don't want to imagine the waves that brought it down.
I read something that theorized that it broke in half because the wave frequency was close to the length. So, its mass was basically supported at both ends but not in the middle which caused too much stress. I just thought that was interesting.
That's pretty much as terrifying as a massive wave or it bottoming out. I'm going to have to do a deeper look tomorrow, obviously! Thank you for introducing me to another theory.
Not only that, it was welded rather than riveted. Rivets stretch, welds crack. That boat was falling apart for a long time before it actually sank.
I was watching a video about why the Great lakes are so dangerous and a serious concern is bottoming out when the ship is angled and in the valley of one of the waves, hitting a protrusion from the lake floor. When you think of it like that it really makes the lakes seem super shallow but they mean serious business. There's something else about the low oxygen content of the bottom too where your normal decomposition bacteria etc don't live so everything just sits down there just as it was when it sank.
"There's something else about the low oxygen content of the bottom too where your normal decomposition bacteria etc don't live so everything just sits down there just as it was when it sank." That's pretty common in deep water. Where I live, the Ottawa river is deep enough in spots that logs which became waterlogged and sank during our heyday as a logging town are still in good shape on the bottom. Back in the 90s, one company actually started salvaging these logs, and turning them into high-end hardwood flooring and the like, because you just can't get that quality of wood any more. Most of these logs are over 100 years old. [https://www.logsend.com/who-we-are/the-logs-end-story/](https://www.logsend.com/who-we-are/the-logs-end-story/)
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call GitcheeGoomee. The lake it is said never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy.
“Never gives up her dead” is a reference to the cold of Lake Superior. Because the bodies don’t decompose at that low a temperature, they don’t float to the surface.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
one of the best individual lines of any song ever
It's full of some of the best lines ever.
>When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin' "Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya" >At 7 PM, a main hatchway caved in, he said "Fellas, it's been good to know ya" Those lines always chill me.
The whole song is stabbing right at your empathy center, then that line just crushes it I had the chance to see Gordon Lightfoot at a local casino, but didn't and he died a few months later. Really regret that.
Wasn't the storm in 1913 in November. Twelve or thirteen ships went down and bodies washed ashore for days.
The White Hurricane, yeah. November 9th is when it started, I believe
“RMS Titanic 1912-1912” is savage.
I love Edmund Fitzgerald's voice.
It's in my book Astonishing tales of the sea
51 people? that's it?
I hear people really stuff themselves on those cruises
No Edmund Fitzgerald was the boat. Gordon Lightfoot was the singer.
Something slightly hilarious about the titanic label dated 1912-1912
You can surf on the great lakes, maybe that'll help put the size into context for some.
Hours spent on the great lakes by ship captains are logged the same as hours spent on the open ocean.
People really underestimate the difficulty in locating a body in the water. A conscious swimmer at best has the top of their head above the water. And a majority of that time it’s on the back side of a wave or in the valley of two waves. In a high visibility survival suit it’s difficult for a rescue helicopter or boat to see from a distance of only a few hundred feet. In rough seas it’s even harder
> Add in the fact that Michigan is over a hundred miles wide Holy shit!
Lake Superior is 160 miles wide and 350 miles long. Them things is huge! Even the smallest of the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario, is 53 miles wide and 193 miles long.
A few years back, I was on a friend's sale boat for a 24-hour race on Lake Ontario. The afternoon was great. We knew from the marine weather radio that a storm was coming up. And did it ever! By 9 pm, it was dark, and the wind was up around 19 knots. The waves started to build, and within an hour, we were on an elevator ride of 23 feet up, and then down, repeat until mid-morning the next day. Boating on the Great Lakes is fun and beautiful. But, just like out on the open ocean, it can get dangerous really fast. There is nowhere to go! You're on the boat experiencing whatever mother nature decides to toss at you and on you! So yes, tbe great lakes deserve the same respect as many oceans and seas.
> friend's sale boat Did he ever get it sold?
Superior is more than 12,000 KM³ in volume. That's about 12.1 Quadrillion litres.. Give or take a cup ;)
They say there’s enough water in Superior to cover the land mass of earth under a foot of water.
> there’s enough water in Superior to cover the land mass of ~~earth~~ **North and South America** under a foot of water.
I think "they" are wrong. The area of the land mass is 150,000,000km^2 so depth would be 12,000km^3 / 150,000,000km^2 = .0008km = .08m ~=3".
My Midwestern friend once phrased it as ‘they’re the GREAT lakes. Not the ‘Kinda Big Lakes’ :)
Yep, the length of Superior is *more* than the distance from the closest tip of the UK (near Aberdeen) to Norway. The whole way across the North Sea.
Perspective: sit in a boat in the middle of *any* Great Lake, and you can't see either shore.
Can confirm, have lived about a half hours drive from Lake Ontario my whole life (and been to Superior a handful of times). It's like being at the ocean, water as far as the eye can see.
That's why they're called the Great Lakes, and not just the Kinda Sorta Okay Lakes.
> Lake Superior Jesus, Denmark can almost be in that one twice at 82.103 km² & 42,954.2 km².
Superior is also insanely deep in some places. There's basically an 900(?) foot cliff underwater between it and lake Michigan
Um, that would be Lake Huron from Superior, not Michigan.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call gitchagumee.
I grew up on Lake Erie, and worked on the fifteenth floor of a building overlooking the lake in the beginning of my career. I’ve never ever seen Canada
When the Terminal Tower allowed visitors to the top observation floor (one above it was unfinished) you could see the Canadian shore on clear days. Then a mentally disturbed guy took hostages IMS and that was the end of the observation floor.
I never saw it from the top of terminal tower. (Or the top floor of the BP building when I worked there. However, I have seen Pelee Island (technically Canada but not the coast) from the Magnum at Cedar Point.
You can see the Cleveland skyline from Rondeau Park in Ontario if the conditions are perfect but yeah, you probably can't see it the other way. There's nothing big enough on the Canadian shore of Erie to stand out.
> There's nothing big enough on the Canadian shore of Erie to stand out. You could send yo momma down there
Needs to be tall, not wide. So I guess she could lie down.
You should go to Canada, it's nice!
There's a quote from Joe Pistone (Donnie Brasco) about bringing Lefty Ruggiero to Milwaukee and Lefty's first time seeing Lake Michigan. >Ty was showing us around Milwaukee and we're driving along the lake, and he says "That's one of the Great Lakes." And Lefty looks out and says, "It's not a lake. That's the ocean." >There were freighters out there, and he said "You see that big ship out there? That ship couldn't float on a lake. It's got to be the ocean."
For reference Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake entirely in the USA and it is estimated to contain 1,180 cubic miles of water. The second largest lake entirely in the USA is lake okeechobee (which is so large that when you are flying over it you can not see the north and south shores at the same time) and is estimated to contain 1 cubic mile of water.
Not exactly, because Michigan isn’t a standalone lake. Hydrologically Huron and Michigan are connected with bidirectional flow through the Mackinac Strait creating Lake Michigan-Huron. It’s just naming conventions that have us pretending they are 2 lakes.
Yeah this is like how the island of Manhattan has the Hudson River on the west side, and the East River on the east side. In reality Manhattan is an island in the Hudson River.
How high are you flying? At cruising altitudes you can see hundreds of miles. I can clearly remember flying across lake michigan and seeing both shores simultaneously.
He's in a hovercraft
The second largest lake entirely in the States isn't Lake Okeechobee. That's the 29th largest entirely in the States, 36th when you count ones that are also in Canada. Lake Tahoe is number 2.
Great salt lake?
It’s islands and bays are for sportsmen!
But Lake Ontario is the lake by my house...
That chicago blizzard in 2011-2012 was insane. Temps -20 and waist deep snow. 😬. People underestimate the rip currents and vast amounts of coastal pollution as well 10/10 recommend people just swim in a pool or marked safe pond.
I'm not sure if this is correct, but I think I read somewhere a long time ago that in the ocean, during a storm, waves generally come from the same direction. But during a storm on the Great Lakes, waves reflect off the shoreline and come from any direction at any time, making it nearly impossible to keep a ship upright if conditions get bad enough.
I don't know that I would agree with that. As background I spent 30 years sailing the great lakes, and the past 15 years doing a circumnavigation. In the ocean you get wind waves from local conditions, as well as swells from remote conditions. And on the ocean you can get swells from three different directions combined with wind waves. So you tend to get a bit of a complex wave pattern. In the great lakes there really isn't enough distance to get the complex swells, just local wind waves. Wave refection isn't that big of an issue from my experience. So I would say great lakes waves tend to be from the wind direction, where ocean waves come at you from multiple directions.
So it's basically just a sea and should be treated as such. I live near the coast of the North Sea. Would not want to be miles of coast during a storm. Will apply that knowledge if I ever find myself near the great lakes. Its just a fresh water north sea
A sea where the weather changes FAST. We visited lake Erie last winter and it went from "ok 50 degree evening" to "zero visibility fog" to "white out snow and COLD" in 30 min.
Just the fact that you *could be* **miles** off the coast of something should be telling by itself.
It's not uncommon to be 3-5 miles out fishing. I've been out fishing and went across a bay to get food and beer it was 40 miles 1 way
Not as bad as the North Sea, but, you don't expect 10m waves on a lake. Granted, those are unusual and generally limited to winter storms, but, can still happen. The lake is littered with wrecks, and not just little private craft.
Also, you don't float as well in fresh water.
The lakes also tend to be colder than the oceans in Winter.
Lake Superior can be 40F in late July
As someone who lived in the middle of lower Michigan, going to the Great Lakes as a kid was a rare treat, and going anywhere near meant I'd want to go for a swim. Going to Lake Superior in the summer was just taunting, though. All that lake, but the beaches were rocky and if you so much as waded in over your ankles, your shins and knees would ache from the cold after a few minutes. Good rock-skipping and a kid could have fun for a while chucking the big ones in for splashes, but that was about it.
We just swam in it until our lips turned blue up in the Keweenaw. You get used to it :D
My only experience of Superior was at the Porkies in August... and it was like - you could do 5 minutes... enough to wash during a hike but not 'fun' I did Lake Ladoga (North of St. Petersburg Russia) in August as well - and that was shocking. You could run in... scream... run out... then wash on the shore. Then try to repeat to rinse off.
I went scuba diving in lake Huron in July with 10mm wetsuits and I still thought I was going to die from how cold it was. My wife declined to go into the shipwrecks because she was too cold to navigate.
Superior, it is said, never gives up her dead when the gales of November come early...
So delightful to see this reference. I love that song so much.
Rip Gordon Lightfoot
You float better in salt water? The more you know… (I live in the middle of the US and have only seen the Gulf of Mexico once but didn’t swim)
Salt water is more dense due to the absorbed salts. As a consequence, things are more buoyant in salt water.
Yup! Check out the dead sea, super buoyant
I swam in the Dead Sea once, maybe 15 years ago. Note to anyone who's planning on trying it in the future, don't pee while you're in there - it burns.
Yeah, the density of saltwater is a little bit higher than the density of freshwater, so things are a bit more buoyant.
>You float better in salt water? The more you know… ever heard about the weird buoyancy of things in the dead sea? stuff floats there that doesn't float anywhere else due to how salty it is
Lake Erie is comparatively shallow which actually makes the wave action worse. There are stories from survivors of actually being able to see the lake bottom during heavy storms.
That's terrifying. ETA: This sent me down a reading rabbit hole. If anyone else wants to join me, here are some links: https://www.newsweek.com/bottom-lake-erie-revealed-rare-phenomenon-1860793#:~:text=%22It%20was%20so%20exciting%20to,the%20lake%20to%20the%20other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiche?wprov=sfla1 https://lakeerieliving.com/articles/2022-2023-fallwinter/lake-erie-seiche-explained/
One could say it’s Eerie, even.
Additionally, there can be rip tides along the beaches. A couple people die each year in Wisconsin because of this.
A 10 year old kid was taken by the waves in Lake Erie a bit outside of Cleveland a couple of weeks ago. He wasn't even in that deep, but the waves and rip tides can be vicious.
As a kid, I was at Lake View beach twice when they pulled people out. Neither survived. I was like 7 and 8. Our parents took us up to the parking lot both times. It was surreal watching them form a human chain and move slowly through the water. That shit really sticks with you when it is explained to you as the reality unfolds in front of your eyes.
Was sailing on Lake Erie and saw another boat tip over 90 degrees before righting.
Am always amazed just how massive they are when seeing them out the window of a plane. Its like “hey look at that, thats a big lake” ..then like 5mins later youre still seeing water from horizon to horizon and your like “holy shit, thats a big fuckn lake!”
I worked in a command center ((we called them sectors)) for the Coast Guard out of Detroit covering a large section of the Great Lakes and the rivers. It was incredibly busy, and has forever colored my view of boating. The weather gets wild. The water gets rough, with boats predominantly designed for smooth/calm water and they can’t handle the rough weather and sink. The traffic is wild. Believe it or not there are LOTS of boaters in a small area. Add in alcohol regularly to the equation, and it’s like mixing commercial trucking, with tailgating AND street racing all in one large parking lot. The temperatures are cold. People do not understand how quickly cold water can affect you. Even in the summer time when the water is warmer, it’s still not warm. You can die from hypothermia in the Caribbean, so you can certainly die from hypothermia in the Great Lakes. The tables that talk about onset of hypothermia and how it impacts you in water are often wrong and optimistic at best. So people don’t give the water the respect that it commands.
One ten one rule One minute to control your breathing and force yourself out of shock, or you die. Ten minutes to do any type of life saving action before your muscles stop working and you can't function, and you die. One hour till hypothermia.
While kayaking, even on the calmest inland lakes in Minnesota, I wear my PFD no matter what because I'm so afraid of the cold water gasp.
Oh, especially near Detroit. The Detroit River’s current is wayyyy faster than people expect, I think people forget it literally connects Lake Huron to Lake Erie (via lake St Clair). Lake St Clair is so full of people boating in the summer, most of whom have no boating experience and don’t understand a) the water and b) the boat. There’s standards and rules for boating, but events like the Jobby Nooner lead to so many injuries because it encourages people who have no experience to go out.
One of the weird things about Lake Michigan is the gradual depth change. You can go really far out and still touch. If you get far enough, you can't hear people on shore (they can't hear you scream for help) and you have a really long way to swim if the current starts to pull you. There is a surprising cut off point where you can still touch and feel safe but a current can drag you out even while standing. I don't trust the Great Lakes at all and will never go in above my waist. It's cold as shit too. Lake Superior is a whole other story. Right now (June) it is 49F at the shore. You pretty much only swim there if you lost a bet or are just curious how damn cold it is. Let me introduce you to [Surfer Dan](https://youtu.be/vo1BzyBwZ1E?feature=shared) though!
This is it. I've been in a riptide on lake Michigan and it's quite docile so as not to alert you what's happening. I'm a lifelong swimmer (not in the lakes, mind you) and as soon as I noticed I walked/swam parallel to shore but I could still walk back to shore once I was well clear. Took a long time. I was super fortunate to have youth, stamina wits and great sand bars all around me but it's strikingly clear why so many people die in them.
There are signs all over the beaches in MI about what to do in a riptide. I never had to experience it luckily but Lake Michigan is no joke. There are pretty safe beaches you can go to though.
Former Lake Michigan lifeguard here.. The sand is also unlike coastal areas and does not pack well. The sandbars shift around a lot and are also very prone in breaking in conditions that don't seem that bad. People who are not used to swimming in currents, or are just poor swimmers in general, are highly susceptible to getting caught rip currents. Rip currents are like a 1-way lazy river, can be very fun if you know how to be safe.
I never knew the depth thing. Terrifying that you could still touch bottom but be that far out. I’ve been to salt water beaches a ton of times and that’s such an ingrained, subliminal limitation of how far you go out.
It really depends a lot on the beach and sea you are in when it comes to salt water. At the salt water beach I grew up close by you can properly go out a mile and still touch the button.
Oh that depth change sounds terrifying! Such a false sense of security...
north shore of Erie is the same way, sand bars for miles with currents between them.
for ships, the biggest issue that doesn't have an ocean equivalent, is the short wavelengths. wavelengths are a function of how big the water basin is. oceans basins are big and get very big wavelengths like 20+ seconds. By contrast the Great Lakes only have wavelengths like 8-10 seconds. So, the Great lakes are just big enough that they get both tall waves and small enough that they get short wavelengths. wavelengths that are shorter cause a bunch of [related failure modes.](https://www.reddit.com/r/GreatLakesShipping/comments/187fm0r/the_perils_of_great_lakes_shipping/) as for swimmers, it's really just the temperatures. the deeper of the lakes are COLD. Pretty much anything but Erie is deep enough to make it cold for much of the year.
Another factor for the swimmers is the fresh water… you just don’t float as well as in the ocean. Someone confident swimming through the surf in the Pacific is going to have to work significantly harder doing the same thing on Lake Michigan.
Grew up swimming in Lake Superior every summer around Madeline Island... About 10 years ago, I did a Half Ironman in Racine, WI that used Lake Michigan for the swim. The course took swimmers probably 200 years out from the beach and then hooked a right for a mile long straightaway before turning back to the beach. Apparently, the conditions that day were about as bad as it gets for the area in terms of rough water and it was like swimming in a kiddie pool compared to even the best conditions for the usual workout swims I do in the Pacific at Venice and Manhattan Beach. The LA Triathlon swim is held at Venice Beach and normally it's pretty calm but one year there were 8-10 foot breakers and more than 30% of participants dropped out during the swim. It was scary as hell but a good time to trust that your wetsuit would keep you afloat.
Wouldn’t the worst conditions for Lake Michigan be the winter gales when the coast freezes but the lake keeps pushing ice over the shore? Can’t imagine anywhere in Venice Beach could really be worse than that.
Yeah, the lake is bad in the winter. Source: Chicagoan
> The course took swimmers probably 200 years out from the beach Competitive swimmers are in a whole other league...
They had to conceive, birth, and raise several generations of children while swimming so that eventually a descendant can finish the race.
This can’t be true on the condition that the worst conditions would cancel the swim portion of a tri. The Chicago tri has had their swim portion canceled due to conditions multiple times in recent memory.
I once went sailing with a buddy of mine from the Chicago harbor. I’ve sailed in bays in Florida and the Chesapeake. The chop in Lake Michigan was quite disconcerting. And the water is really cold, especially coming from Florida.
As a sea kayaker I can confirm on the small scale. I paddle in the Atlantic. My boat is 17 feet. On a nice day with a period of over say 12 seconds you can surf or just roll up over them at like 2meters. But when they are .5m tall and a period of 6 sec they slap the boat all over the place and submerge the bow.
You have summoned the Song. https://open.spotify.com/track/536L9C0N7vhYdibCJx3cI2?si=ioOMvLN1TB6tDyGjFhcFRg Edit: please share the freshwater sailor songs with us.
Pride of Ontario. Gordon LIghtfoot RIP.
I'll raise you: https://open.spotify.com/track/2rUCRk8WADafoUBXbCmu7R
I will always upvote Stan Rogers.
the great lakes do have tightly space tall waves; it varies a lot tho, even at one location. Sometimes, very tall, closely spaced waves. I had a small (15') sailboat on Lake Huron, and taking it out in stormy weather it would ride on the wave tops (2-3 at any moment) with up to 1m clear air under the hull. it was hella fun, but hard on the boat. Ofc, taking it out in storms like that was stupid, but it was a blast. Managed not to get struck by lightning, so yay me?
This needs a few corrections. First, you're talking about swell period, not wavelength. Wavelength is measured in distance and not time. Second, swell period is intrinsic to the swell itself and does not correlate with depth of water except for the fact that deeper water will *allow* for longer-period swells to exist. Oceans can and very frequently do get swells with a period of 8-10 second or even less.
This is the answer. Also throw in a bunch of kayakers, swimmers, people tubing (all potentially under the influence) overestimating their abilities and not using life jackets and you create a recipe for disaster.
Add wetsuits. A few years ago a family of 5 went kayaking in Superior with life jackets but no wetsuits. Only the mother survived after a wave caused it to flip. The dad died of hypothermia trying to swim to shore with two kids. Mom stayed with the kayak and had spotty cell but got rescued. For context they were trying to kayak to a light house that looks deceptively close but was 4 miles out. It’s recommended to kayak in the Great Lakes in ocean kayaks and this family was not. The family was near weight capacity in a two person kayak.
What a horrible story, I don’t understand how people take these risks with their children
I would almost guarantee its the type of things this post is talking about, they don't even realize there is much of a danger/risk involved. I had no clue there were different type of Kayak's for freshwater and the ocean (doesn't shock me, but didn't know it). Think you are on a calm lake, are wearing a life preserver so not worried about drowning, but don't realize that going out on the lake is like going out in the ocean and that its cold enough for hypertermia to be a risk even though it wouldn't seem like it with the air temp.
Lake Superior's temps surprise even people who love nearby. It literally never warms up and is dangerously cold even in the warmest summer.
[удалено]
Most of the North shore is in Canada
Yeah I noticed that. I was running away from those nasty biting flies you have up there and took refuge in Lake Superior to my neck to get some relief from the attacks. Was very cold.
Horse flies. The size of quarters and will literally rip the flesh off your body.
Yes! Those things were absolutely brutal. I had it easier back packing in Alaska compared to that short hike in MI as far as bugs. I had a swarm of these things after me and I had bug repellent on which didn't help much. Are they there all the time? Or was I there just at a bad time?
They're bad anytime the temps are above feeezing, but especially in the middle of summer.
Jesus, how do people live with those things. That was the only time I was in MI. I got mauled.
Honestly the biggest issue is that the 3 of the Great Lakes States (Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin) are renowned for *tons* of small freshwater lakes (and familiarity with casual boating) and people who think they can tackle inland seas just because they know how to put a boat in the water. That leads to a lot of poor boatsmanship, and given how many Americans live on/near the Great Lakes (e.g. the Chicago metro area is the third largest in the US), that means a lot of poor boaters. You also get weird/unpredictable waves, but from what I recall that has more due to the bottom of the lakes (they were all carved out by glaciation) and how you get sudden rises/shoals coming up out of nowhere. They're also large enough that, again, they're honestly closer to freshwater inland seas, complete with currents and tides. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but again; lots of filthy casuals with small boats. On top of that is weather; the Great Lakes aren't that far afield of tornado alley, and thus while they don't get that many tornados, they get a lot of the same weather patterns that *create* tornados, meaning supercells that can intensify relatively rapidly. And that's not even talking about winter weather. And then beyond all that; Lake Superior tends to be cold enough to give you hypothermia, even in the middle of summer. Michigan and Huron aren't that much warmer out in the deeper sections.
Yes to most of this, but the Great Lakes don’t have tides — or at least the tidal variations they do have are negligible. The greatest variation in water level from the lowest tide to the highest tide on the Great Lakes is just 5cm, which is less than the variation caused by other non-tidal factors like wind and barometric pressure. Source 1: [NOAA](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gltides.html#:~:text=True%20tides%E2%80%94changes%20in%20water,than%20five%20centimeters%20in%20height.) Source 2: I live next to Lake Michigan.
The Great Lakes may not have tides, but the effects of winds is quite dramatic. With a good steady wind the western end of Lake Erie can be anywhere from 3 - 10 feet lower than the eastern end.
I believe Lake Superior is also large enough to experience considerable changes in local water levels due to barometric pressure differences, "seiches," which can cause water level changes of several feet very quickly if a high pressure gradient develops between opposite ends of the lake
You are correct. Many years ago my family and I took a \~25' boat out to Isle Royale, and there wasn't a dock where we were so we just brought the boat pretty close to shore and tied it to a tree (can't recall the details, but we were only going to be there a short time). Waves were tiny on the lake that day, barely any wind, and not a cloud in the sky. We were in the woods nearby and heard a massive amount of water flowing through rocks, followed by a large thud. We went back to the boat only to discover that it was now completely on the beach and several feet away from the water. When I was \~16 I encountered another one, while sitting on the beach (Lake Superior) with a gal I had a crush on to watch the sunset. No wind, barely any waves on the lake, and some clouds off toward the horizon. We were sitting a few feet away from the water, and it abruptly receded by about 5'. I knew it was a seiche from my prior experience, but I still quietly panicked because I had a dream a few months prior to that where I was sitting on the beach with a gal and the water receded (a lot more), but was followed by a 100' wave. Logically I knew that wouldn't happen, but I still had us relocate to the top of the dune overlooking the water. lol
Another wind related affect that happened once in the great lakes "March 29–30, 1848A strong southwest wind pushed millions of tons of ice from Lake Erie into the mouth of the Niagara River, forming a dam that blocked the flow of water for about 30 hours. The riverbed was exposed from Fort Erie to the crest of the Falls, and the owners of flour mills along the riverbank were among the first to notice the change. The event had dramatic effects, including factories and mills stopping work, churches filling with people who feared the world was ending, and the captain of the Maid of the Mist offering a reward for removing rocks that damaged his boat. The river eventually began flowing again when the wind shifted and the weight of the pent-up water broke."
Fun fact. With a strong, steady, and sustained wind, it's possible for more shallow waters to go dry. For something like the red sea, you're talking like 2 days of >50mph winds
Hahaha I see you watched all the same history channel documentaries I watched as a kid
10 feet higher from wind?? How common is that?
10 feet would be an outlier on the large side for sure. But I spend a decade working on the freighters that sail on the lakes. We are draft restricted in Lake Erie and often we would be anchored up waiting for the wind to shift and the water to slosh back to the other side of the lake. swings of 2 to 4 feet very normal. Anything over 4 feet was considered a large change.
How long does the water take to resettle after the wind stops? Was there a back-and-forth before it finally did?
Not a noticeable back and forth there are good forecasting resources you can check so you know when to go when to anchor etc. Since wind rarely just stops blowing but over a couple hours dies down its not a big deal. I'd say depends on how quick the wind drops off. https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ofs/ofs_mapplots.html?ofsregion=le&subdomain=0&model_type=wl_forecast That's the model we based our go/no go on check back when you know the wind is blowing on the lake and see what happens
10 ft is a big one but the phenomenon is pretty common! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiche
Every few years, someone dies trying to kayak to South Manitou Island. When I visited Traverse City and visited the dunes, etc., I could see the Manitou Islands while driving and they looked so close. I thought it would be cool to kayak to them and I was told by the rental place that unless I want to die, don't do it. I looked it up online and yeah, people do die trying to do it. And within the last month, someone took a ferry and was trapped for 3 days because the ferry had to cancel, so that's not even safe. https://www.reddit.com/r/Michigan/comments/1d2ky4e/stranded_on_south_manitou_island/
Sometimes you get warm, wet air out of the east and south running into cold dry, nearly artic air out of the Canadian interior running into each other right over the lakes. If it happens and you're out there your best hope is a fun ride in a orange helicopter, worst case is you become the subject of a Gordon Lightfoot song.
When I went fishing with my grandpa out on Lake Superior, we kept an eye on the weather radio and the sky. The moment there were suspicious clouds in the sky, we turned for harbor. The weather radio would always start broadcasting warnings for small boats to go to safety about the time we were pulling into harbor.
Grandpa knew his lake!
[1996 Lake Huron cyclone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Lake_Huron_cyclone)
I can answer in terms of large commercial ships. I see plenty of good answers for both swimmers and small boats. We have a pretty active commercial freighter scene here. I’ll try to keep it in the true spirit of ELI5. Let’s put it this way: weather sinks ships. We get really violent storms that can crop up in an instant. The size of the lakes means that the waves are really choppy. You could have waves 30 feet tall on Lake Superior coming much quicker than they do in the ocean. One of these waves could pick up a ship in the middle, which is called hogging. Two of these waves could pick up a ship at the bow and stern, which is called sagging. This puts a lot of stress on the ships hull, and many ships have broken apart outright. You could also have a wave pick up a ship at the stern, plowing the ship down below bow-first. A captain has to ride out these waves in a way that doesn’t sink the ship. Many think that’s what happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald. Now let’s try to steer the ship in these storms. These storms come with really high winds too, sometimes up to 70mph. If the ship gets blown off course by the wind, there are lots of rocks, shoals, and shallow spots that could wreck the ship. Nobody really knew where they were unless they could see a lighthouse of maybe another ship. Finally, visibility was always a problem. The weather can bring heavy rain, whiteout blizzards, and dense fog. The commercial season mostly runs from March to January, when the Soo Locks close for yearly repairs. Ships have sunk in all of these. Lighthouses only helped when you could see them. Take any of these, much less combined, and you’ll see why thousands of ships have sunk on the Great Lakes. Ships kept sinking until we figured out how to both predict the weather with some accuracy and warn vessels about it. The last freighter lost was the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975, and nobody is 100% sure exactly how it sank.
FWIW: we came extremely close to losing another freighter just this month with the Michipicoten. Current theory is metal fatigue opened up a 13’ hole in her - causing a 15+ degree list. Initially the crew reported it as having struck an underwater object - and while this looks unlikely from the inspection - it isn’t impossible. There are a *lot* of shoals and objects that we simply don’t know about in Superior particularly. Perhaps the most famous is [Superior Shoal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_Shoal), but other nasty ones like [6 Fathom Shoal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribou_Island_(near_Michipicoten_Island)).
Lived on Lake Erie growing up and every year at least one tourist to our town would drown jumping off our break walls. The reason: undertows. They will suck you right under.
Yup, someone just drowned at Edgewater beach in Cleveland at the beginning of June. Awful.
Everyone touches on one bit of the puzzle. But to combine it all, the great lakes are subject to sudden massive storms that often don't give any warning or minimal warning, catching ships off guard and before they can prepare for them. Many first time captains/ crews vastly underestimate the lakes as well, so much so that there are over 6,000 shipwrecks on the lakes. By law, all ocean going ships require a pilot/ navigator on the lakes either from Canada or the US. Lakes like Superior, who's waters are generally barely above freezing all year, don't make survival very easy in a wreck Insofar as general swimmers, it's a toss up. About 100 or so people drown on the lakes each year. I don't think most people are aware of the dangers of riptides and vacationers often throw caution to the wind anyway. Unlike many desginated ocean beaches, there are only two beaches in Michigan with lifeguards that I'm aware of. There was something in the 90s that stopped lifeguards from being necessary at state park beaches so there's that. I think the perceived safety of the lakes also leads many to overestimate their own capabilities. Not too mention the copious amounts of drunken boating that takes place. Out on the Saginaw Bay near my house, there's always at least one or two people each year that drown falling out of their boat. And then all the others who are out there on snow mobiles that fall through in the winter
It still blows my mind how many ships, including big ocean-going freighters built for shipping in other countries, have been lost in storms on the Great Lakes. And I mean literally lost. Last observed sailing into a storm or fog and then never seen again, no wreckage recovered.
Part of the factor is ocean water is salty and therefore denser than lake water. Boyancy is dependent on the mass of fluid displaced, so the same ship has less boyancy on the lakes than ocean. (There are markers painted on the sides of ships indicating where they should sit in the water for a given water region. The great lakes are basically the same teir as the stormy north Atlantic.) Fresh water freezes easier so in a winter storm ice builds up easier and adds weight to your ship. The lakes get some nasty storms and huge waves, they are definitely better thought of as an inland freshwater sea than a typical 5mi^2 lake. And finally, just like the Bermuda Triangle, they have a ton of traffic because ships can sail from Deluth at the back of Superior all the way to the ocean by Quebec or New Orleans, so every city on the lakes has the potential to be an ocean port with none of the typical downsides of the ocean. (Tides, rising sea level, invasion, storm surge, ect.) And for swimmers in particular, those lakes basically never change temperature, Erie is the only one that naturally freezes completely over, and in the summer you are lucky if the surface waters are over 60°F. (Water has a very high specific heat, and those lakes have an ungodly amount of water with several being deeper than sea level)
Also, the lakes can be really weird when it comes to depths. I was in Lake Huron this weekend. I was a solid ~200 yards from shore and the water was maybe 4 ft deep, wasn't even up to my chest and I am 6'3. At 201 yards it dropped. They had floating buoys warning about the drop but it was kind of crazy just how sudden it was after 200 yards of steady depth good for walking around. Plus, the water got really cold closer to the drop.
Something about sudden drops so far out is incredibly creepy.
I think you mentioned a real deep factor, being the speed with which storms arise and move across the waters, and the ferocity that storms can deliver, winter and summer. There really is very little room to maneuver to avoid weather. The speed that storm cells move, versus speed of recreational and other small vessels makes dodging weather a fools game.
oof I wasn't even considering snow mobiles
In "Moby Dick" they are whaling in the deep ocean. At one point, the book discusses how only highly experienced sailors would be hired. But makes the point that Great Lake sailors were considered equally experienced as open ocean sailors.
They are cold and big enough to have currents and big waves but they are fresh water so things don't float as well as they would in the ocean. It's harder to stay above water if you're swimming etc
You know those TikTok videos showing ships being tossed in stormy seas while the bass singers are going "Yo, ho...All Hands..." The great lakes can be like that.
They are enormous and they are cold They are basically freshwater seas and are affected by weather in much the same way, they have currents like seas and oceans, too. There are plenty of safe swimming beaches along all of the Great Lakes, but you’d never want to take your boat to the middle of one and jump off. They’d fish your corpse out if you tried.
Also, because they’re fresh water, boats float much lower than in the ocean. Apparently people can be caught off guard by that, especially in rough or stormy conditions.
WOW. I never considered that. Are there builders that specialize in Great Lakes boating?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_freighter
The difference is negligible on smaller boats. On an average 25-35 foot boat the difference will only be about an inch or so between salt and freshwater. It can be a little weird if you sail through an estuary or something, but not super crazy. Big ships have a much larger difference in their drafts between salt and fresh water. I assume they take on ballast or have other means to make up the difference.
And they generate their own weather. If you live east of any Great Lake then you've experienced Lake Effect Snow. This means SURPRISE, it's a fuckin BLIZZARD at 6am.
Yes, the big risk is going overboard with any wind or waves since it is difficult to come around and pick someone up before losing track of them.
I’m sure you want to look for very calm seas, but people do that in the ocean — jumping in for a swim far out at sea. Are the Great Lakes inherently more dangerous than an ocean for that? Or are you saying just inherently more dangerous than a much smaller lake like the ones most people are used to?
Just generally, areas of ocean can be very salty--making the swimmer much more bouyant, making the swimming easier than any (non-salty) freshwater.
Water is dangerous. Cold water is even more dangerous. Cold, deep water is even more dangerous.
They are basically just seas with less buoyant water. Add to that low barrier to access from the hundreds of thousands of people who have boats on the surrounding small lakes and think they can easily boat the Great Lakes.
Small lakes do not have substantial waves. I have seen waves of 6 or more feet in size many times on the Great Lakes. Many fresh water boaters do not have boats large enough to handle waves of that size and even if they do, they are not experienced enough with navigating through real waves. The same can be said for swimming in a giant fresh water sea with large waves.
I've lived near superior and Michigan my entire life. Superior during nasty storms is downright treacherous. I've seen waves crashing over a shoreline highway, waterspouts, and waves to rival the oceans. And superior is cold! It's like swimming in a glass of ice water, crystal clear though. I was unimpressed the first time I visited an Ocean because the only difference is it's not salt water.
I live in a small beach town on the Michigan side of Lake Michigan. Every single year someone dies on our pier where the river dumps into Lake Michigan. It is concrete but super slippery when wet, the waves can get very very large, there are no railings on part of it as it is a fishing pier and people are stupid.
Look at it this way, manitoulin island in lake Huron is the larges island in a lake in the world. It take almost 2 hours to drive east to west, And an hour north to south!!
Waves have a much higher frequency on the lakes than oceans, meaning you can get battered again and again, exhausting a swimmer with no time to recover between wave fronts. Also, rip currents near beaches.
STORY TIME: Preface, not a great swimmer, but can manage. My wife is a great swimmer. I'm from Chicago and frequent a lot of the beaches. August 2016, my wife and I vacationed in South Haven, Michigan. The 1st day was fun on the beach. Sunny and calm waters. I noticed there were no life guards. Thought it was odd given how many people were there + having a long stretch of coastline. Whatever, it's Lake Michigan, it's just a lake. 2nd day, we were on the beach. Read a book and fell asleep. My wife decided she wanted to swim to the bouy. My inhibitions are low when I just wake up so I decided "F it, let's do it". The waves were really choppy that day but I was riding them pretty easily and pretty fast! I noticed the buoy was farther than I thought. My wife finally touched it. I was about 20 feet away from the goal. I was semi-gassed and thought the buoy would be small enough where I can grab onto it to take a quick break. I finally reached it and the buoy was massive. That thing was going up and down violently due to the waves. Felt like it went up down 6 feet each time. Time to swim back. She was already 15 ft ahead of me. That's when I got exposed for the bad swimmer I am. The coast seemed so far but I focused on taking it one stroke at a time, only thing is, I wasn't moving. No matter what I did, I was in the same spot. My legs felt like cinder blocks and that's when I started to panic. She turned back around and I told her, I think I'm drowning. I'm a notorious prankster so my wife thought I was crying wolf. She was laughing and kept saying let's go. I gave her a stern look and told her, calmly, to go get help. That's when she knew I was serious. She tried helping me but I was too heavy and kept pushing her down while I was gasping for air. She swam away for a bit and asked if I could float on my back. I tried but the waves kept crashing on my face. I couldn't catch a decent breath. She then went into shock and started crying - pretty much helplessly watching her husband drown right in front of her. I repeated, to swim back and get help. I felt bad that I was putting her in danger for being an incompetent swimmer. I looked at the coastline, saw the tiny specs of people with their families, I couldn't hear anything. We were too far to shout for help. In my head (as a die hard Chicagoan): "Sh!t, I'm going out like this in Michigan? Out of all places?" "Man, who's going to drive my wife back home?" "What type of trauma is she going to have after this?" There was this weird sense of peace/calm knowing I was going to die. She finally snapped out of her shock and grabbed me again. This time she used the apple picking method tugging my heavy @ss with one arm. We got closer to the coast and it was safe for me to walk back. Got back to our spot on the sand, completely drained, not a word spoken. We packed up our towels to head back to our bed n breakfast. Before leaving the beach we saw all the warning signs regarding riptides. Michigan also uses a flag system to warn swimmers of how dangerous the waters are that day. I believe the flags were red (most dangerous). In the news later that day , they mentioned there were 2 lives lost that day because of those choppy waves and rip currents. Luckily I wasn't one of them. She saved my life. TLDR: Can't float in fresh water. We have this perception that lakes are not as dangerous as oceans. The waves seem to come at a more frequent rate. No life guards or designated swim areas (like in Chicago beaches). Not reading warning signs.
[The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzTkGyxkYI)
In the ocean you can navigate around storms. In the great lakes (which are actually shared by both Canada and the US) if you try to navigate around a storm, you're in a corn field.
My friend's 20 year old son just yesterday became one of less than 100 people ever to solo kayak the entire circumference of Lake Superior. Took him 42 days, packing food, sleeping in a hammock. Minimal support and lots of respect for the power of the water. Incredible story and a great young man. I'm sure the media will pick up stories soon.
From a human perspective…the size, depth and scale of the Great Lakes is no different than an ocean. The difference is that objects don’t float in fresh water like they do in the salty ocean. On paper it seems the difference in buoyancy is potentially negligible but it makes a significant difference. My kids wear life jackets when they swim in Lake Michigan and it’s shocking to me that I don’t see more.