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100th Anniversary of the Great Storm

Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2013 1:20 pm
by EvenKeel
If anyone is in Southern Ontario this weekend, the town of Goderich is hosting an event remembering the storm and its victims. I have been on Lake Huron in nasty fall weather but I can't fathom being out in a hurricane like that. 256 souls were lost.

From the site http://www.1913storm.ca:

"The GREAT LAKES STORM OF 1913: A REMEMBRANCE IN 2013

The last weeks of November, and throughout December, 1913, were bleak and dreary days along Ontario’s West Coast. Citizens in every community, and farmers all along the windswept shores of Lake Huron, were involved in recovery operations following an unrivaled storm that included extremely violent winds and almost two feet of snow. The horrors of the worst maritime disaster on the Great Lakes had become a harsh reality as the flotsam, the jetsam, and dozens of bodies from eight ships totally lost and another 11 broken up and cast ashore – on Lake Huron alone – were recovered."

In the final storm report of the Lake Carriers Association, it read: “No Lake Master can recall in all his experience a storm of such unprecedented violence with such rapid changes in the direction of the wind and its gusts of such fearful speed! Storms ordinarily of that velocity do not last over 4 or 5 hours, but this storm raged for 16 hours continuously at an average velocity of 60 miles per hour, with frequent spurts of 70 and over…. the waves were at least 35 feet high and followed each other in quick succession, three waves ordinarily coming one right after the other. They were considerably shorter than the waves that are formed by an ordinary gale. Being of such height and hurled with such force and rapid succession, the ships must have been subjected to incredible punishment.”

The storm that began to rage late November 08, did not finally subside until sometime on November 10, on the third day thereafter. That tragic maritime event occurred 100 years ago this year."