Every year on November 10 countless people remember the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in Lake Superior with 29 crewmen on 11/10/75. I remember also November 10, 1998, when I drove to Whitefish Point during one of the worst storms since 1975, saw Lake Superior in turmoil, and met a man who was caught in the 1975 storm in a small boat and somehow survived. If you’ve ever wondered why the storms of November are so ferocious, here’s the meteorological explanation:

“November is the deadliest month. Ask any sailor. The Great Lakes still embrace some of summer’s heat then, but the air above has turned to winter. A meteorologist for the National Weather Service once calculated that on average the greatest difference between the temperature of the Great Lakes and the temperature of the air above them occurs on November 10. That differential causes the remaining warmth in the lakes to be sucked into the air, releasing energy and creating wind. With so much energy available over such large bodies of water, even minor storms are intensified. Most of the most devastating storms on the Great Lakes have occurred on or near November 10. And it was on this day in 1975 that the mighty Edmund Fitzgerald went down with all hands on Lake Superior…”

(From The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas, by Jerry Dennis (NY: St. Martin’s Press. 2003)