I grew up right near Lake Michigan and it requires respect for the weather and conditions. I was running with some Waukegan guys starting from the pier and saw a crazy stream of boats racing back to the harbor in a storm. Coach Lorenc at Waukegan was a great collegiate runner and worked to do fantastic things with the kids there. There were numerous water spouts touching down on the water - crazy cool to look at but would chop up any boat that hit one. Big accident between two boats racing in and the Coast Guard impressively saved lives, although not the boats. Weather forecasting in the 70's was not as good as it is today, but it was evident a storm was brewing and the boaters used bad judgment. My track teammate was very bright but got into trouble in the Coast Guard. Sent him as a kind of punishment to the dispatch tower in Milwaukee, (he was set to go to the Academy as enlisted and he was delayed) a place where as the above poster indicates was a leader in deaths and accidents. A true burn out job. The Great Lakes are no joke. Michigan leads in shipwrecks, but I always thought Superior to be dark and foreboding ,but of course beautiful.
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"burn out job?"
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GettingFasterDude wrote:
I live by the ocean. Everybody's afraid of the sharks, jellyfish and the stingrays. But none of them know the most dangerous thing about the ocean. It's the water.
Damn bro you just blew my mind
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bothered wrote:
All of the Great Lakes are actually dangerous for swimmers under the wrong conditions.
The GREAT Lakes are no joke.
but only 170 people die in Michigan each year from motorcycle accidents.
stay out of the water and on your motorcycle.
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Drunk people drown in lots of lakes.
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How many of these drownings are in jet ski water motorcycle accidents? Those seem dangerous
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Only tragic when the people that died already procreated.
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Many beaches in Lake Michigan have dangerous riptides. I actually knew someone who died while helping two kids who were caught in a riptide.
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When I lived in Cleveland, there were always about a half dozen drownings over the summer where someone would go out on a boat, get drunk and then jump in the water when they got hot. Even in the middle of the summer, the water in the lake is still very cold. The combination of booze and the shock of the cold water would cause people to pass out and then sink like a stone.
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A tidal wave in Lake M.!
"The seiche occurred the morning of June 26, 1954, when an 8-to 10-foot-high wave swept eight fishermen to their deaths off the Montrose pier. It was produced by a fast-moving line of thunderstorms that sped southeast across Lake Michigan at speeds in excess of 55 mph.
Powerful winds flowing out of the thunderstorms brought a rush of dense, cold air to the lake surface, producing a rapid rise in the barometric pressure, which pushed a growing swell of water toward the Michigan and Indiana shores. When that swell reached the east side of the lake, it returned as a killer wave to the Chicago shoreline."20 -
breaksit wrote:
There are more miles of coastline in Missouri than in California.
Also, I'd bet Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri has more drowning deaths than the Great Lakes, as a few die every weekend every summer.
Shoreline not coastline.
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The boating conditions change quickly on Lake Michigan. This is why it is dangerous.
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Chef Gordon Ramzi wrote:
Stay out of blue states. Seriously.
You mean the economically more successful and better educated states? The states that pay there own way and then some (subsidizing the poor, uneducated red states)?
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Yes, my friend told me dispatch at the Milwaukee harbor was 100 percent stress. Multiple accidents at once often the case and he had to constantly make decisions as to who to save first. Always second guessed. Not all were saved. Lots and lots of drinking with boats and male egos makes for a world of trouble. The Coast Guard knew what it was doing when it and selected him for the job - my friend was bright and could think on his feet - yet he messed up on a personal matter and they knew he had to take the job to save his career. He is a Phd today and head of a fisheries division for the Dept of Interior. They had a burn out problem in that job and sent one of their brightest to do it. Given his personal troubles, it was one tough job. This guy taught me a lot about both the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan and its dangers.
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Living in Chicago you get surprised by the amount of people that drive into the lake and disappear....Also people walking along will fall in and there is no place to get out of the lake
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Like the ocean wrote:
How many people drown in the ocean per year? The great lakes are massive, there are a lot of people that go on the lakes. I imagine fewer people drown in Lake Michigan per mile of shoreline than drown in the oceans per mile of shore line.
Because people often go out and swim in windy conditions, where undertoe and rip tide often occur. Only swim in safe conditions and it’s normal. And if you can’t swim and go out swimming…well I guess that’s death by natural causes.
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rogermortimer wrote:
Yes, my friend told me dispatch at the Milwaukee harbor was 100 percent stress. Multiple accidents at once often the case and he had to constantly make decisions as to who to save first. Always second guessed. Not all were saved. Lots and lots of drinking with boats and male egos makes for a world of trouble. The Coast Guard knew what it was doing when it and selected him for the job - my friend was bright and could think on his feet - yet he messed up on a personal matter and they knew he had to take the job to save his career. He is a Phd today and head of a fisheries division for the Dept of Interior. They had a burn out problem in that job and sent one of their brightest to do it. Given his personal troubles, it was one tough job. This guy taught me a lot about both the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan and its dangers.
The Great Lakes are actually inland seas comprised of fresh water. If they were salty seas maybe people would take them much more seriously. But since they are fresh water lakes people like to think they are nothing more than mill ponds. That is their first error. The second error people make is not realizing how shallow the Great Lakes are compared to Oceans.
Oceans are miles deep, Great Lakes are shallow in comparision.
The Great Lake are just as dangerous if not more so than any salt water sea on the face of the earth. It's a huge mistake thinking a fresh water lake is safer than a salt water sea that may be about the same size. Swim and boat at your own risk on the Great Lakes.
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Every weather condition faced in the North Atlantic is duplicated on the Great Lakes. That's why the Navy used them as a training area during WWII.
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This is a pretty detailed list of incidents in the Great Lakes
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