Nature never ceases to amaze. Last week, in the Western Basin of Lake Erie, we experienced something that rallies the biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea. But this was Lake Erie, and the event is called a Seiche. What is Seiche?
A seiche is a standing wave oscillating in a body of water. This explanation is taken from the NOAA Website:
Lake Erie is known for seiches, especially when strong winds blow from southwest to northeast. In 1844, a 22-foot seiche breached a 14-foot-high sea wall killing 78 people and damming the ice to the extent that Niagara Falls temporarily stopped flowing. As recently as 2008, strong winds created waves 12 to 16 feet high in Lake Erie, leading to flooding near Buffalo, New York. Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, is also known to routinely form small seiches after the passage of afternoon squall lines during summer months.
In some of the Great Lakes and other large bodies of water, the time period between the "high" and "low" of a seiche can be as much as four to seven hours. This is very similar to the time period between high and low tide in the oceans and is often mistaken as a tide.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/seiche.html
On November 27th, a very strong westerly flow of wind caused a seiche so dramatic, it revealed the remains of a sunken ship presumed to have gone down in the 1800’s.
USA Today carried the following article:
Lake Erie's displaced water uncovers shipwreck likely from 1800s, historians say.
Close to home in Marblehead, Ohio, my son took the following pictures of East Harbor State Park Beach swim area, with no water!
Last year, this was the same area with water skiers.
To put things in perspective, our daughter and her friend were water skiing last summer in what now appears to be dry land.
My son was skiing and in the background is the beach break wall.
The arrows are showing the break wall that was totally out of the water during the seiche.
These are same break walls during the Seiche event.
Another indication was the water level by these docks.
Two years ago, the water was up to the bottom of the concrete dock.
That’s a 4 or 5 foot drop.
Things seem to be coming back to normal as the winds have died down.
This is a picture of a normal water level in the summer.
Note the water level during the seiche.
Like I said, an event of biblical proportions!
