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November 9, 2012—This week (November 13–14) will mark the fortieth anniversary of one the most damaging storms ever to hit the shores of Lake Erie. On the face of it, it seems an ordinary enough event—Ohio, November, a late autumn storm known as a "November Witch." But the circumstances of this storm make it memorable 40 years later.
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Damaged home along Lake Erie, after the November 1972 storm. Click image to enlarge.
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It started with winds from the northeast on the morning of Monday, November 13, 1972. The wind didn’t shift from that quadrant of the compass until more than 24 hours later, and sustained wind speeds wouldn’t dip below 23 miles per hour (mph; 20 knots) for a continuous 28 hours at Lorain and Marblehead. At Toledo, 23-mph winds continued for 40 hours. At the storm’s height, winds gusted as high as 40 mph (35 knots) at Cleveland and 69 mph (60 knots) at Toledo.
Toledo was so much windier due to its location at the southwest end of Lake Erie, where it was perfectly situated to receive the brunt of gales that had blown nearly the full length of the lake. And when sustained winds blow across a body of water, they push water ahead of them. The effect is called a seiche: it occurs when the lake’s level swells at the downwind end of the basin and drops an equal amount at the other end. By the morning of November 14, winds had swollen the lake’s water level at Toledo as much as 6 feet above the November average. At Buffalo, the lake dropped to more than 8 feet below Toledo’s level, essentially tipping the lake towards Toledo.
Alone, this would not have been much of a problem. A seiche by itself normally brings a minor risk of flooding to the southwest end of the lake. But this storm hit when the lake’s level had been rising, almost without a break, since 1964. At least two years’ worth of above-average precipitation would ensure that by 1973, the lake’s level would reach an all-time high, at least since record keeping began in 1860. And those hours of unrelenting gales, blowing down the lake’s length, churned up immense waves—as high as 12 feet at Marblehead—riding on a lake surface now swollen by a seiche.
The combined effect of high lake level, wind-driven surge, and high waves was disastrous. On the Ohio shore, the waves beat some houses to splinters, floated them adrift, or undermined the ground beneath them until they collapsed. Other houses not demolished were invaded by waves and debris; the lake was literally in their living rooms. Roads along the lake—in some places the only means of evacuation—were washed out or blocked by sand dunes that the waves had built in mere hours. News media reported that up to 10,000 persons, mostly in Michigan but also in Ohio and Ontario, had to be evacuated.
Longtime lakefront resident David Dreffer remembers losing a significant chunk of land from his home in Huron. “We lost the whole front lot of our property,” he says, uncertain of the amount of land lost but recalling that three or four trees were lost. He also recalls water about three feet deep covering the roadway to Cedar Point amusement park and floodwaters running through a home from the front door to the back.
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Homes along Lake Erie damaged by the November 1972 storm. Click image to enlarge.
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The Lorain Journal reported public and private damages for Ohio of $22 million (about $110 million in 2012). If that figure seems unimpressive against multibillion-dollar damages from Atlantic hurricanes, consider that this estimate was for only seven counties in Ohio at a time when the lakeshore was much less developed than today. Fortunately, no deaths were reported in Ohio or Michigan. Nevertheless, as then-governor John J. Gilligan put it, the storm was “a real human tragedy.” How real? Niles Beach, a community of summer cottages on Maumee Bay, was wiped out and never rebuilt.
To be fair, the November 1972 storm wasn’t the only hairy weather the lakeshore faced during that period. The remnants of Hurricane Agnes had battered the coast the previous June, and in April 1973, an unnamed gale hammered the shore again. Together, these storms and the high lake level left a legacy:
- Politicians blamed industries and governments, instead of the rain, for the high waters and sought a quick solution. (As is often the case with natural phenomena, their understanding was oversimplified and there was no quick fix to be found.)
- In 1973, the number of applications for permits to build shore protection structures increased tenfold.
- By 1976, $58 million (about $290 million in 2012) would be spent on erosion protection.
Not only landowners were spurred into action. Similar to the Cuyahoga River fire of 1969, this stormy period seems to have galvanized an era of new awareness. Influenced by a burgeoning environmental movement, federal and state governments began to examine the environmental and economic impacts of coastal erosion and flooding. Ohio’s own Coastal Erosion Program was one result.
Since 1972, the lakeshore has only become more developed; homes near the shore are not only more numerous but more expensive. It’s as if the storm damage of 40 years ago is an obsolete concern from a bygone time, like smallpox or runaway horses. Such conditions raise the question: Could a similar storm today top the damages of 40 years ago? It seems unlikely, given that shore protection measures today are generally better designed. Still, as the November 1972 storm taught us, the difference between a nuisance and a disaster may be only a matter of when and how long the wind blows.
Further Information
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