Not a good day to be out on Gitche Gumee

[Speedy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Superior

"Wind and waves during the storm warning: expect sustained winds of up to 42 knots from the northeast... with gusts up to 55 knots. The largest expected significant waves will be 18 feet with a maximum wave height of up to 27 feet possible."

[NewtonMP2100]

On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
O'er the water pointing westward,
To the purple clouds of sunset.
Fiercely the red sun descending
Burned his way along the heavens,
Set the sky on fire behind him,
As war-parties, when retreating,
Burn the prairies on their war-trail;
And the moon, the Night-sun, eastward.....



....'The Song of Hiawatha'....Henry Wadsworth Longfellow....

[OWC Jamie]

Go for swimming lessons anyway.

[DeusxMac]

It's not named "superior" for nothing.

"...the largest freshwater lake in the world in area"

[DP]

There are regularly storms up there that if it was the ocean, they'd be classified as hurricanes.

[Ombligo]

And with no currents, the waves break from every direction. Great Lake storms are generally more dangerous the ocean storms of similar intensity.

[StingMe]

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee.
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
when the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,
that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
when the gales of November came early...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKJNBxDCMIs

The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald
Music and lyrics ©1976 by Gordon Lightfoot

[Lizabeth]

DP wrote:
There are regularly storms up there that if it was the ocean, they'd be classified as hurricanes.

Why aren't they? Curious minds want to know...if they are that bad, why not create an new type of classification for the Great Lakes weather?

[OWC Jamie]

They're called November Gales or Witches of November ( both mentioned in Gordon Lightfoot's song )

They are extratropical cyclones.