"Strong winds frequently produce seiches on large lakes, but most are rather small in size — less than 30 cm (a foot) high — and go unnoticed amidst the general surface wave motions. However, during severe storm conditions, water-level differences greater than 5 metres (16 feet) have been observed between opposing lakeshores. Large seiches (i.e, greater than one metre (3 ft)) occur in the Great Lakes basin every year, usually from May to September. The Great Lake most affected by seiches is Lake Erie because it is the shallowest and its basin is often aligned with storm wind directions. One passing storm set up a seiche in 1979 that resulted in a water-level difference of 4.3 metres (14 feet) between Toledo and Buffalo." source
PS- Spent plenty o' time seichin' on Lake Michigan as a yute.
Some people believe that it was a rogue wave that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald back in 1976. This rogue wave is referred to as the "Three Sisters".
The ship was damaged already by the time the wave hit and it finished off the ship.
Here's a cut and paste from an article on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald...
Theory 4: Three Sisters
Perhaps the most romantic theory about the wreck of the Fitzgerald is that the ship succumbed to the forces of the Three Sisters, a Lake Superior phenomenon described as a combination of two large waves inundating the decks of a boat and a third, slightly later monster wave that boards the vessel as it struggles to shrug off the effects of the first two.
Again, Captain Cooper of the Anderson provides fuel for this theory, as he relates in Marshall’s Shipwrecks of Lake Superior that slightly before 7 p.m. “we took two of the largest seas of the trip. The first one flooded our boat deck. It had enough force to come down on the starboard lifeboat, pushing it into the saddles with a force strong enough to damage the bottom of the lifeboat.… The second large sea put green water (the powerful center of a wave) on our bridge deck! This is 35 feet above the waterline.”
Since these two large waves struck the trailing Anderson mere minutes before its final radar contact with the Fitzgerald, might they have joined a third rogue wave, overtaken the struggling Fitz 10 or 15 minutes later and overwhelmed the already listing and troubled ship?
As with all of the other theories, it may well be that we will never know the total story of this wreck - leaving each theory, for now, as good as any other.