Then the weather office issued a severe weather bulletin. Time to
hunker down here by Lake Superior at Montreal River and wait for it
all to happen.
I had scheduled Sunday afternoon to write my column about the
extinction of distinction. But the signs of impending November gales
were too much to ignore. I switched gears, grabbed my NDD’s
(non-digital devices) and decided to follow the progress of the storm.
My NDD’s included pen, paper, a barometer from the 1970s (The numbers
it gives are not of the digital accuracy, but the rotating needle does
portend the weather.), an outside thermometer from the 1990s and a set
of eyes. For 24 hours I noted what’s what and learned how a storm of
this size traipses through our yard.
The first hint that something was up came when I got up early Sunday
morning. I went outside and was met by unusual warmth. It was 12 C and
the air felt thick, mushy and full of that persistent perpetual
dampness that is so November.
At 10:27 am I tapped on our trusty wooden barometer. Our unit had
flinched down to 98.0 kPa and was heading towards Stormy from Rain. Oh
yeah, keep an eye on that, I thought. By 12:30 pm the reading was 97.1
and the temperature was 14C. When the sun tried to peek out from under
cloud cover, its light had a strange brilliant intensity. The sky was
a milky grey; the lake was grey; the dark grey horizon was straight
and small SW rollers made bumps under a smooth surface. Gulls sitting
on the lake showed the only white on the water.
At 1:10 pm, our barometer had sunk further, entering the Stormy range.
Ten minutes later a swarm cloud of gulls circled out over the lake,
the horizon got fuzzy and a grey white wall was heading in from the
SW. Rain began to fall, a few drops at first then a major downpour. By
2:40pm, with a barometer at 97.0, the rain was firing down like
bullets. There was no horizon, no whitecaps, little wind and the same
small rollers.
An hour and a half later, the rain still was coming - not bullets but
a steady dance. At 4:57 a gentle rain plinked on the puddles. It was
back to 12c; our barometer dipped to 96.7 and darkness began to settle
in. There was the same gentle roll under a calm lake. The sky was 50
shades of grey. As the light faded I began to wonder what all the
warnings and fuss were about.
Except that our barometer continued to plummet. By 7:45 it read 96.0;
the puddles were getting fat on all that rain and there still was no
wind.
But, not for long. Around 9:00pm I detected a shift. And by 9:30 we
heard horizontal rain pelting the windows and that unmistakeable,
constant roar. Barometer at 95.9. Ouch. The march of the waves had
begun. Four hours later the wind was a window rattling battering ram.
And, at first light, the monstrous foamy mouth of one of the biggest
waves I’ve ever seen smashed onto the bedrock and devoured the shore.
The rest of the morning was never ending 3-4 m monster waves and
driving rain. Then, temperatures fell, rain turned to snow, the waves
started their collapse and barometer readings began their climb back
up. And later that afternoon I heard of storm consequences - trees on
power lines, rivers over flowing over their banks and a lake freighter
seeking refuge in Batchawana Bay.
Our November Gales are the stuff of legends. When Superior becomes a
tumultuous white sea, the stories of men and ships lying on the bottom
always seem to surface. One hundred years ago, from Nov 6, 1913 to Nov
11, 1913, there was a storm with 145 km winds and 11 m waves. That
gale hit the Great Lakes basin, taking out 19 ships and drowning 250
people. Most of the damage was in Lake Huron, with Lake Superior
swallowing the Leafield and the Henry B Smith. In May, 2013,
searchers, using computer data, discovered the wreckage of the Smith.
But only Lake Superior knows how to find the Leafield.
Today our severe weather bulletins make lake travel much safer and
digital devices have awesome advice. They can make accurate forecasts
and keep us connected when the predictions prove true. But, at the
same time, let’s not forget to keep our own wits sharp too. For they
give us the real warning about an approaching storm.