The Liquid Mountains of Lake Erie and The Witch of November

"I chose to focus on Lake Erie at a time of year when the Great Lakes often act more like oceans than lakes.

With the warm, sunny, beach days of summer behind us, it is during autumn's darkest, coldest and windiest days that the Great Lakes are transformed into wickedly wild and treacherous bodies of water. Masses of cold, arctic air push southward and collide with the warmer air above the lakes. This creates the perfect conditions for massive wind storms. These conditions are often referred to as "The Gales of November" or "The Witch of November." The waves at this time of year can be an amazing display of Mother Nature's power and a photographer's dream to capture. I can best describe the scene like a giant washing machine. There is no pattern to the waves: they move and explode in unpredictable ways, often colliding into one another and creating spectacular explosions of water. With winds reaching speeds of 70 mph (Category 1 on the hurricane scale), these powerful winds generate waves that reach heights of 20'-30'. These movements of water are large and powerful enough to send ocean freighters to a watery grave at the bottom of the lakes......

- Photographs and text by Dave Sandford | LensCulture

In a rustic old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early

Posted by gerardvanderleun at August 24, 2016 1:00 PM