I was driving on a back road today when I spotted a row of round hay bales that were wrapped in white plastic lined up in a row in a field, and they looked similar to old breakwater posts covered in ice and snow I saw in a Lake Superior harbor.
Ice Coated Posts
The wind gusting to 50 mph was blowing the light coating of snow all around. It would have been interesting to see what the waves looked like today on Lake Superior from the wind but it would have been a very chilly adventure.
Waves Hitting
Mother Nature has been rather cruel to Northern Wisconsin this spring since when there is even a hint of spring arriving, more than a foot of new snow blankets the ground again. And Duluth, MN has set the fifth snowiest winter and with more snow predicted tonight, they might make number four.
I don’t know if spring will ever come before winter starts again and even my ducks must have headed south again as they didn’t like the snow.
Will Spring Come
Winter’s Strong Grip
The “gales of November” (also referred to as “Witch of November”) is used by Great Lakes sailors to refer to the peak storm season, which usually occurs in November. Storms during this time frame can be brutal, but also are marked by rapidly changing weather conditions, which can make it difficult to navigate the waters.
The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, historically referred to as the “Big Blow”, the “Freshwater Fury”, or the “White Hurricane”, was a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that devastated the Great Lakes Basin in the Midwestern United States and the Canadian province of Ontario from November 7 through November 10, 1913 in which 30 ships were damaged and twelve ships sank.
The “gales of November” was popularized by the Gordon Lightfoot song after the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald which sank on the evening of November 10, 1975, 17 miles northwest of Whitefish Point on eastern Lake Superior.
So I don’t think I will go out on a boat in Lake Superior on November 10th and just watch the these calm waves from shore instead.
Gales of November
The harbor in Cornucopia is protected by a breakwater which provides refuge from Lake Superior’s sometimes angry disposition. But sometimes the lake’s anger disposition still wins as it sounds like there were some issues after the current breakwater structure was built in 1957.
There is a long line of older wooden posts which probably was the original breakwater but are now abandon and feeling the pounding of Lake Superior. I saw requests for a breakwater for Cornucopia in 1911 so these weathered warriors probably started their duty sometime after the request was approved.
Weathered Wooden Warriors
