Huge storm on Lake Superior-Duluth, MN
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Check this picture out from yesterday on lake superior here in Minnesota. If you've been there this is the lighthouse on the end of the pier in canal park right in town.
On a nice summer weekend day thousands of people will walk this pier. On days like yesterday they shut the gates...
Cool...... Can you imagine back in the day being a lighthouse keeper out on Stannard Rock.....In the middle of Lake Superior.... Riding out the storms out there ??
Old time keepers called it the loneliest place in North America........
I bet the lift bridge operator was puckered tight all day yesterday! Those waves were literally moving rocks the size of Volkswagen.
WOW! That's amazing. I've only been there 1x and it was almost glass comparatively. That's an unreal picture.
Looks like the "Witch of November" may be a few weeks early this year. Looking at that picture which was taken from land, during the day-I can't imagine what it must have been like on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
the lift bridge doesn't operate in those conditions.
It is an amazing picture. My Parents and I took a vacation in summer of 1975 up to New England, on the way home we drove to Niagara Falls. It was awesome. I'm going to visit the Great Lakes area with the RV after I retire. I'm bringing my fishing poles with me.
There is a lighthouse ten miles from shore out in the Delaware bay. They used to keep a man in the light house. A friend of mine was friends with the guy in the light house. We would go out at night. The man would lower a rope, we would attach a six pack. He would lower an electric cord. We would hook up lights and the sea trout would come right to the top. We use sturdy rods and would catch sea trout one after the other. We would get 22 cents a pound for them. No one on the light house anymore but it is still there a lit up at night. You couldn't pay me to be on that light house during a storm.
Gitche Gumee........ The big lake it is said never gives up her dead...... when the gales of November come early........
If I drive from my cabin north to Whitefish Point... about a half hour to 40 minutes drive.... then take a boat out about 17 miles northwest from Whitefish Point in about 500 feet of water,,, I could visit the gravesite of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I have visited the shipwreck museum there at Whitefish Point. They have the bell from the ship there.
Lex..... Stannard Rock is 24 miles from shore and it’s in a lake !!! It’s the most distant lighthouse from shore in the US..... It sounds similar to the light in Deleware Bay.
Lot of dead sailors in that lake.
Actually the bridge operates 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and only closes for maintenance. The very day this footage was taken you could see cars driving across it, in fact.
yes cars can drive across it but it was not operational- meaning they were not raising it for ships or sailboats.
I grew up on lake superior in the Marquette Michigan. It is a lake of no mercy and unquestionable beauty. I've been on the water when it is like a sheet of glass and also been out when I now I shouldn't have. Every year college students from NMU would go on the breakwall and try to dodge the big waves, Many years some never got back to shore.
I swam 8 miles out to alligator lighthouse and back in Islamorada Florida in 2016. I'm going to try and do a long swim in Lake Michigan one of these days.......obviously in the summer.....no waves! I wouldn't even want to walk out to the ones posted above!
8 mile swim? That’s more scary than the pictures above.
My grandfather and great grandfather purchased a parcel of land on a lake 35 miles north/northeast of Newberry in the early 50's and built a resort of 5 cabins. The resort was just a couple of miles from Lake Superior and I spent a great deal of time up there in the 70's and early 80's.
There is and will always be 2 stories about Lake Superior I will never forget. The first involved an Indian that my grandfather was friends with. His name was Charlie Singleton and he spent his days making a living fishing the big lake. His boat was an old tug that he had revamped to fit his needs. One day in early July he ventured out on to the lake to do some fishing and the fog rolled in as it did on most days. Now Charlie being an Indian and having grown up on the big lake his whole life never utilized a compass. Said they were a white mans toy. Well Charlie on this particular day never found is way back to shore and the fog never lifted as it normally did.
The lake was fogged in for 4 consecutive days and only lifted after a front blew thru but that in turn made the lake ugly. After the fogged lifted Charlie was able to find his bearings but now had to battle an extremely rough lake many miles from shore in a boat that wasn't designed for such conditions. He eventually made it back to what is called Little Lake Harbor where he docked his boat.
Little Lake Harbor is shaped like a horseshoe and Charlie entered the harbor and proceeded past his dock and headed south on the lake only to make a sharp right turn on the opposing U of the lake and dropped the throttle on the tug and gave her everything she had. He beached the tug on the opposing U of the lake and hopped off the boat and never looked back. He told my grandfather that his fishing days were done. That was the last time he ever went out on the lake.
The spot where Charlie beached his tug was a great pike fishing hole and I spent a great many days sitting in the back of Charlie's beached tug casting a live perch on a treble hook below a big red and white bobber out into Little Lake.
The night that the Edmund Fitzgerald sank my grandparents were at their resort buttoning things up for the winter. I remember my grandfather telling about driving to a look out point just west of Little Lake harbor that late afternoon and him telling of how that was the worst conditions he had ever seen on the lake. I remember him telling of how he didn't think any ship could survive the size and frequency of the waves. That night he said the wind was so bad they barely slept for fear of what it was going to do. There were several oak trees around the cabins and that night the biggest of the bunch, one in which 2 people could not put their arms around and touch was snapped clean off about 15 feet off the ground. I remember seeing that oak the following summer being cut in to firewood with a 2 man chainsaw. It is amazing the power that lake has when the weather turns bad.
Jeff.... Your grandfathers resort must not have been too far from the Rainbow Lodge at the mouth of the Two Hearted River.... Made famous by Hemingway fishing up there. The Rainbow Lodge burned down in a forest fire 6 or 7 years ago......The Duck Lake Fire....I took a drive up there and was pleased to see it was rebuilt.... but the owners were ready to retire and haven’t been able to sell it because everything was burnt up in the area.
You should google the Arthur Andersen..... there are some interesting radio transmissions between her and the Fitz on line from the night the Fitzgerald went down. The Anderson is still in service today.
Here’s a Pike I caught last month near there Jeff just north of Newberry......
Another..... Love pike fishing up there.....
We lived in Duluth when I was a kid, right before that we lived in Panama...definitely a shock to the system. My Father was stationed there in the Air force. I can remember trying to swim in Lake Superior in the summer. What really stuck in my mind was the water was so cold it was painful.
Big bear.... My grandparents resort was on Culhane Lake. I have an Aunt that has a place on Pike Lake.
Good looking pike there Big Bear. perfect size for eating