1 of 3
Shawn Malone
341Weather1
A storm front kicks up waves at Presque Isle Park in Marquette.2 of 3
Shawn Malone
341weather2
Surfing at Marquette.3 of 3
National Weather Service
Wild About Weather
A satellite view of the October 26-27, 2010, extratropical cyclone that rocked the region.
The next time that you are in a department store, look up to the ceiling. It’s about 20 feet or so to the lights. Now, imagine a wave that tall racing toward your boat in the middle of a churning Lake Superior. (It’s happened; ask the folks who work on the freighters.)
Or how about this: Snow begins to fall outside your window one evening. Winds gust to 50 mph creaking and cracking trees and making your house give serious groans. Some 24 hours later, 36.6 inches of snow have accumulated outside, clogging streets and maybe even making it tough to get the door open. (Been there and done that in Houghton, Michigan, January 17, 1950.)
Wild weather is the joy and the peril of living near a freshwater sea that boasts 3 quadrillion gallons of solar-energy conductor and 31,700 square miles over which the air, and thus the weather, can be lake affected.
The wilder the weather, the more we talk about it today and remember it tomorrow. Mark Seeley, University of Minnesota Extension climatologist and author of Minnesota Weather Almanac, says we suffer from MAD – Meteorological Affected Disorder – and savor weather stories the way baseball fanatics accumulate team statistics.
Going MAD is nothing new to our region. “Some of our people have perhaps been too prone to dwell upon the unpleasant weather features of our climate,” Herbert W. Richardson, a Duluth Weather Bureau forecaster wrote in 1914. “When we do have a storm or cold wave of any special consequence, the fact has been advertised far and wide. It is the exceptional that excites comment, and particularly newspaper comment. The average excellence of the climate is accepted as a matter of course.”
Karl Bohnak has proof of our weather fascination. Chief meteorologist for TV6 in Marquette, Karl wrote So Cold a Sky with regional weather stories since the arrival of Europeans. He once did a talk on the Upper Peninsula’s “storm of the century,” a January 1938 blizzard that dumped 3 feet of sand-grainy snow, unleashed 50-mph winds, stranded travelers and caused a fire to threaten downtown Marquette. “People climbed out their second-story windows. It was really a huge event. … It’s the storm up here against which all others are measured.”
So who would go to hear stories about a storm come and gone 80 years ago? “There were 200 people who packed in this room and there were people standing outside,” Karl remembers.
Locals like the bad weather and the stories it brings, he says. “We’re proud of it; we wear it like a badge.”
Big Lake Weather 101
What makes our weather so darned interesting? Is it all Lake Superior driven?
We’ve heard those pat phrases: It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. It’s not the temperature, it’s the windchill. Well, here’s another one to add to your arsenal: It’s not just the Lake, it’s the location.
Don’t get me wrong, Lake Superior plays a huge role in what weather we get and where we get it. It’s the factor behind the difference in Thunder Bay’s annual snowfall average of about 74 inches versus the 208 inches of snowfall in Hancock, Michigan, across Lake Superior in the heart of the snowbelt on the Keweenaw Peninsula.
But there is another big factor affecting us – our location in the center of a continent and near the vortex of seasonal weather patterns that draw moist warm air from the Gulf of Mexico and send it colliding into cool, arctic blasts barreling down from Canada.
“We’re right in the middle of a continent,” explains Mark Seeley. “We’re exposed to a degree of randomness that’s way beyond what others are.”
“We’re sort of in a good battleground much of the year,” says meteorologist John Dee of Houghton. “We get these clashes of winter air with the more moderate air farther south. Storms feed off that temperature difference.”
“We can’t blame it all on Lake Superior,” agrees Carol Christenson, the warning coordination meteorologist at Duluth National Weather Service.
Weather anywhere, good and bad, is essentially determined by the relationships between air pressure systems. The barometric pressure – a.k.a. air pressure – is quite simply the weight of the air above us.
Cold air weighs more and tends to hang lower while lighter, warm air rises. It’s what makes hot-air balloons rise and is the essence of those low and high pressure systems that can cover hundreds of miles.
Heating or cooling the air changes the pressure, which, in turn, causes weather fluctuations. A decrease, or a drop, in barometric pressure generally means storms. An increase, or rise, can mean clear, fair skies. The greater the decrease or increase, the more severe the weather shift.
“The tendency of the pressure is the most important thing,” says Karl, “rising or falling and at what rate.”
So, back to our location. Here we frequently experience a collision between a Canadian low pressure system’s cold edge with the warm air around a high pressure system coming up from the Gulf of Mexico.
This is where Lake Superior and our local terrain figure into the equation – and where the forecasts become more interesting for local meteorologists. They must analyze how our local terrain’s height variations (what will happen to systems going up or down hills) and whether our giant inland sea will cool or warm the air and add moisture.
It isn’t easy. Our “colder by the Lake,” after all, refers to summer while “warmer by the Lake” would be the winter alternate. So while the average January temperature is 8° F for Duluth, where temperatures are taken “over the hill,” in the shore-hugging Grand Marais about 113 miles northeast and where one might expect colder temperatures, January generally brings an average 4 degrees warmer: 13° F.
The oft cited “lake effect” generally refers to precipitation – rain or snow – generated from a cold low pressure system sliding over the warmer lake water. Lake effect can also be thanked for the haunting “sea smoke” rising off the water and for our dense fogs.
“This is a part of the world where we can get very warm temperatures in the summer months, bitterly cold temperatures in the winter months and yet there is a sameness over Lake Superior,” explains Geoff Coulson, a meteorologist with Environment Canada.
Annually air temperatures locally can fluctuate from minus 20° F up to 90° F, while Lake Superior’s core water temperatures hover near 40° F all year.
In winter, freezing cold air is heated above the warmer Lake, causing it to rise and, through evaporation, taking Lake water to either form clouds or saturate existing clouds. This exchange also increases a pressure system’s energy and kicks up winds, which in turn can kick up the waves.
“They can start in the foothills of the Rockies as relatively dry systems,” says Geoff. “Over Lake Superior, they can literally pick up moisture and energy and become a different type system.”
Hence how the Lake will or won’t affect a system becomes a forecast challenge along with deciding which potential factors will or won’t have the most influence. Despite better forecasting tools – and higher accuracy – factors like the Lake sometimes throw meteorologists a curve and cause that worn phrase “they get it wrong 50 percent of the time and still keep their jobs.” (Every meteorologist I interviewed mentioned this; no need to tell them anymore. Or, as Karl puts it: “You’re only as good as your last forecast.”)
In our region, too, Lake Superior is not the only body of water able to kick up a little lake effect. Especially in late fall, Ontario’s 1,872-square-mile Lake Nipigon can add moisture and warmth to a low-pressure system and can send its lake-effect snow to fall on Lake Superior.
With the predominant winds in the area from west to east or northwest to southeast, the most “lake effects” head to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, northern Wisconsin or the eastern Ontario shore, Wawa to Sault Ste. Marie. “Duluth can have them, but it occurs more infrequently,” Geoff says. “The winds must be from the east or northeast.”
In summer’s warmest months, a reverse effect occurs. Lake Superior’s “cool dome,” generated when the water temperatures are cooler than the air, can calm on-the-water turbulence even while winds might be howling at 1,200 to 1,500 feet above the water, Geoff says.
Weather around our Lake can be very local.
Jim Sharrow, facilities manager for Duluth Seaway Port Authority and an avid sailor, recalls July 30, 2006, when he sailed into Bayfield, Wisconsin, disappointed that a lack of wind forced him to use the motor. He never expected what he found at the Bayfield dock, near the annual outdoor art festival. “People were standing on the docks in shock. … People all over were pulling artwork out of the water. The tents for the art fair were gone and twisted up.”
Straight-line 80-mph winds had roared through town, snatching artwork, smashing booths and ripping the roof off a 100-year-old church. These “derechos” can be produced by downdrafts of severe thunderstorms. “This was while we were motoring down,” says Jim. “We didn’t have any wind.”
Such intensely local catastrophes, usually part of a larger system, are why storm warnings must be heeded. “The biggest mistake that I can think of,” says Keith Cooley, a meteorologist with the Marquette National Weather Service, “is getting accustomed to hearing a warning and maybe going outside to see it for themselves.”
Storms on the Lake
On the lakeshores, weather can get dicey and dangerous. On the Lake itself, riding out a storm brings out respect, even on freighters.
“I’ve seen blue water come in the pilot house windows – that will make a believer out of you,” says Captain Ken Gerasimos, port captain for Key Lakes/Great Lakes Fleet. Blue or green water, as it’s called, is below the crest of a wave and Ken saw it breaking on the pilot house, more than 20 feet above the waterline.
Especially beyond the Apostle Islands headed for the Soo Locks, storms are sobering. Ask Fred Cummings, whose father and grandfather were seamen, and who served five years on the 858-foot Roger Blough and who retired from the Great Lakes Fleet as its marine superintendent.
“Once you get past Devils Island going east, you’re in open water. You can’t see the shore,” says Fred. “The storms out here on the Big Lake, they’re horrendous.”
Over centuries of commercial maritime travel, hundreds of vessels have wrecked on Lake Superior with some disappearing all together and missing to this day. At least 350 major wrecks remain in the Lake. A Big Lake storm even killed Douglass Houghton, Michigan’s state surveyor and geologist. At age 36, he drowned in a violent October 13, 1845, storm at Eagle River and his body was not found until May the next year.
Today, Internet access and satellite service brings nearly instantaneous weather information and warnings. That’s quite a difference in just a few decades, Ken says. “In the mid- or late ’70s, they started getting teletype machines so you could actually get a picture of a weather map. … Most of the time you were still sending out MAFOR codes. I still use that, I still refer to it.” MAFOR, or “may-four,” is short for Marine Forecast, a North American code that compresses weather forecast information for quick radio broadcast.
All commercial sailing officers are tested on meteorology as part of their training and licensing. A good forecast gets captains off dangerous waters. “Some guys might get caught out there, but not many anymore,” says Ken, who was first mate on the Arthur M. Anderson.
Although a freighter is really “a floating city,” he says, “with 14- to 20-foot waves, you run for cover.”
Fred remembers when storms came up faster than ships could make port. “When you’re out on the Lake, sometimes a storm just comes up. You’re out there working, and they just cut out the work and say, ‘Secure the deck until it’s over with.’ You keep the crew informed on what’s going on; tell the cook not to fire up the stoves.”
Once, he recalls, “the wind and the waves were just beating that ship. It was one of those situations where you just had to keep going because there’s no place to go. The boat bends a little bit, creaks and groans … the seas comes over the pilot house. … You go back to … the hundreds of ships that have sunk … knowing they were in it and knowing there was no place to go but forward.”
The next question is obvious. Why go back on the water? “You go back for the love of the profession … and they’re making a living for their families. And normally, after a storm subsides, the weather is beautiful. The Lake is calm, the lighting is so much different. It’s vibrant out there.”
Rough water is not the only danger, so is frozen water at the end of the maritime season in mid-January and at its beginning in mid-March. There is ice to sail through and ice to keep off the vessel. In 2010, freezing temperatures became a problem early, Ken says. “We were solid, thick with ice. We were breaking ice on Thanksgiving Day. From then on, it was a long, cold winter.”
Deck crews keep ice – and its added weight, which is like additional cargo – off the vessel as much as possible, using hot water or steam to melt it or chopping it off.
U.S. Coast Guard cutters, like the Alder stationed in Duluth or the new Mackinaw in Cheboygan, Michigan, break ice for commercial vessels. The Coast Guard coordinates with U.S. and Canadian fleets, keeping daily communications, Ken says. “The Coast Guard has a good idea about how to plan ahead.”
The economics of weather
Some watch the stock market to make economic forecasts, but around Lake Superior, a look outside your window might be a good indicator of local economic winds. Be it tourism, a major economic driver in our region, or simply city and homeowner maintenance costs, the weather affects our pocketbooks.
Even one event can greatly impact the economic well-being of businesses and tax-generating operations.
The AMSOIL Duluth National Snocross brings about $5.5 million to the local economy with sales of food, beverages, lodging and gas (snowmobile-hauling rigs can pay up to $400 to fill-up). Racers and spectators come from around the country and the world, says Gene Shaw of Visit Duluth, a snocross organizer. In 2011, the event drew attendance of 32,000 over three days. But weather can affect the success of this early-season race, annually the weekend after Thanksgiving. Getting snow is not the issue. Spirit Mountain, where it’s held, can make artificial snow – unless unseasonably high temperatures, or rain, melt it. It has been delayed one or two weeks in the past, at great expense.
Renée Mattson, executive director of Spirit Mountain, says the facility artificially makes snow, regardless of natural snowfall, to give a good base consistency for skiing, tubing and snowboarding. “Real” snow helps in one way, Renee says. “The natural snow, for us, helps with the ‘brown backyard syndrome’” – when people see brown grass in their yard and think the ski hill must be closed. It is not.
But a brown yard elsewhere can be a boon to tourism. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula benefits when its early-season lake-effect snow makes it the best game in the Midwest for winter sports. In summer, as temperatures creep higher than 90 in Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul, colder by the Lake sounds good. “We have one of the world’s greatest air conditioners right outside our door,” says Gene.
Weather does affect city budgets. It doesn’t take a disaster, just a slight change in winter. Thunder Bay, for example, budgeted $3.87 million for 2010 snow removal, sanding and salting. It spent about $2.3 million thanks to a mild winter. The year before it spent $4.6 million, some $700,000 over budget, says Charles Campbell, manager of the city’s central support division.
During the light snow years, the city puts money into reserve for more expensive years. It contracts for some snow removal, eliminating staffing for a “worst case” storms. Charles has seen a cost shift toward more need for sand and salt and less for actual snow removal.
Marquette budgets $1.2 million for winter road tending and also has seen the need for more sand and salt, says Scott Cambensy, city superintendent of public roads. One big blizzard isn’t a budget breaker. Cleaning up the 10 to 15 inches of snow after this year’s 48-hour New Year’s storm cost $30,000. “Snowfall isn’t necessarily what gauges what you put into a winter budget. It’s probably cheaper to do one big snowstorm than it is to do many smaller ones. … We’ve had much of our weather falling on the weekends – a good portion of that has been on overtime.”
Bad-weather friends
We all may have slight cases of MAD (Meteorological Affected Disorder), but some of us have it bad. Bad-weather tourists and storm-loving residents find plenty to rejoice about with a bit of a blow.
Several lakeside lodging places have standing requests from regular guests for a call if a storm kicks up the big waves so they can head to the Lake.
Bob Tema of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, listens to Rocky Mountain weather when he wants to come north to surf. “I’m always looking for the big low pressure systems that are developing over the Rockies, even sometimes beginning on the West Coast,” says Bob, a founder of the Lake Superior Surf Club. “If the center of the low pressure system tracks just a little bit south of Lake Superior, that will result in strong northeasterly winds on the Lake.”
Freshwater surfers have their best season during the late-fall and early-spring storms.
“We love the inclement weather,” admits Bob, who grew up in Hawaii. When he discovered Lake Superior surfing, “it was like a second lease on life. Surfing is one of those things that’s addicting. … It’s just the complete sense of survival and adventure. … You’re out there, just really living. You feel the life. The sensation of riding on a pulse of energy, literally being pushed by a wave of energy.”
For 11 years, photographer Rob Stimpson and David Wells, owner of Naturally Superior Adventures and Rock Island Lodge in Wawa, Ontario, have turned bad weather into a good idea. Rob teaches a “Gales of November” photography workshop. “It’s almost got like a cult following now; a lot of people from southern Ontario have never been to Lake Superior,” Rob says.
Some years students simply enjoy the beautiful scenery in mild late-fall weather; a few years storms oblige. One year the blizzard was so strong it delayed the workshop by a day; another year a blizzard kept everyone on an extra day. Rob has learned that his class happily braves pouring rain or driving snow if their needs are met at day’s end. “They need a shower, they need a glass of wine, they need a bed.”
Similar photo workshops have been given at Lutsen Resort and at North House Folk School in Minnesota.
Sometimes people come for the interesting weather … and stay. People like private meteorologist John Dee. He eagerly moved to the Keweenaw Peninsula from near Chicago. “I got sick of waiting for the amount of snow to pile that you could play in,” he says. Plus, in the Keweenaw, “they are really friendly people.”
John is hired to do forecasts far from the U.P, helping farmers to plan for growing seasons in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, China and Europe. He could live anywhere and ply his trade, but he’s content where he is. “It’s a very exciting place to live, if you’re a weather buff.”