Free Republic

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald Was Just Scanned by An AI — And It Revealed Something No One Expected Beneath the icy depths of Lake Superior lies the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a ship that vanished without warning nearly fifty years ago. No distress call. No survivors. Just silence. Now, for the first time, advanced AI has scanned the wreck with breathtaking precision. What it revealed was not just decay or twisted steel, but details that no one expected to see. How could one of the most respected ships on the Great Lakes disappear so suddenly? The answers hidden in this scan...

Fathoms beneath present-day Lake Huron, early Americans once stood on dry land, hunting caribou as the animals migrated between southern Ontario and northeastern lower Michigan.A team led by University of Michigan researchers drew international attention when they announced those findings a decade ago, after discovering rock arrangements indicative of prehistoric hunting camps on a lake bottom ridge.But far less fanfare has followed the scientists in years since, as they've pieced together an increasingly clear picture of life 10,000 years ago in the now-submerged subarctic grassland...They've discovered fragments of tools that look nothing like other Great Lakes artifacts from a similar...

WATERTOWN, N.Y. – Several communities across the Great Lakes region are preparing to be blasted by feet of snow as winter weather moves in just as millions of people across the U.S. ring in 2025. Numerous communities along Lake Erie and Lake Ontario have been placed under either Winter Storm Watches or Lake-Effect Snow Warnings as the region once again gets set to dig out from under feet of snow after a brief pause in the treacherous weather conditions. The Winter Storm Watches stretch from Ohio to New England and include cities like Cleveland and Syracuse and Watertown in New...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Paralyzing amounts of snow are continuing to smother towns along the eastern shores of the Great Lakes as a record-breaking lake-effect snowstorm blasts the region, prompting major road closures and travel bans. As of Sunday, snowfall totals have exceeded 3 feet downwind of Lake Erie in parts of northwestern Pennsylvania’s Erie County and western New York south of Buffalo and downwind of Lake Ontario in northern New York, and an additional 1-2 feet of snow is possible before the storm begins to wind down. With snow falling between 1 and 4 inches an hour, accumulations overwhelmed efforts...

Researchers have uncovered fascinating insights into the lives of prehistoric Native Americans who made camp in the Great Lakes region around 13,000 years ago.The camp, now called the Belson site, was set up in what is now southwest Michigan by a small band of people from the Clovis culture, as first reported in a study published in 2021.But now a new study, authored by the same team and published in the online journal PLOS One, has shed new light on the site. The work reveals, among other discoveries, that the Clovis people likely returned to the site annually over several...

A 'cursed' wooden steamship that vanished in Lake Superior in 1909 with 14 crew members on board has finally been discovered. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society say they found the Adella Shores after it went missing on May 1, 1909, in Whitefish Point, Michigan. Adella Shores - which locals feared had been cursed after its sober owners christened it by smashing a bottle of water on its hull rather than booze - was found more than 40 miles northwest of Whitefish Point in over 650 feet of water. The 195-foot ship was built in Gibraltar, Michigan, and weighed in...

The lakes hit their lowest ice cover in over 50 years last month, with experts warning that toxic algal blooms and lower fish stocks could follow.Biologists have been keeping tabs on a remote Lake Superior island's fragile wolf population every winter since 1958. But they had to cut this season's planned seven-week survey short after just a fortnight. The ski plane the Michigan Tech University researchers study the wolves from uses the frozen lake as a landing strip because there's nowhere to touch down on the island. But this weirdly warm winter left the Great Lakes nearly devoid of ice....

The Midwest and the Great Lakes regions will have some of the hottest housing markets in the U.S. this year, according to Zillow. The real estate marketplace predicted Buffalo, N.Y., to be the “nation’s hottest housing market in 2024,” with Cincinnati; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis; and Providence, R.I., rounding out the top five. “These should stand out as strong in a housing market still buffeted by low inventory and relatively high mortgage rates and prices,” Zillow added in its report released last week. Other cities included in Zillow’s top 10 projected hottest housing markets for 2024 include Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Cleveland,...

They’re hungry, hungry mollusks. Thousands of historic shipwrecks sunk in the American Great Lakes are at risk of being lost forever thanks to invasive, wood-destroying mussels. The lakes are home to an estimated 6,000 shipwrecks, with some dating back to the 17th century, according to estimates from the University of Buffalo. The Quagga mussel, originally native to the waters of Russia and Ukraine, is believed to have arrived in the Great Lakes in 1989 — possibly as a result of ballast dumps from transoceanic freighters traversing the lakes. The population of Quagga mussels has exploded in the waters of the...

AP, so auto-excerpted.

The publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 sent shock waves through state agencies. The following year, in 1963, the Arkansas branch of the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife (which later became the US Fish and Wildlife Service) imported grass carp as an organic treatment for catfish ponds. Carp, with their voracious appetites for plankton, were a chemical-free filter. When the approach proved successful, additional species — black, silver, and bighead carp — were brought from Vietnam and Malaysia, and later from China and Russia as well. Without differentiating among the species, agencies like the US Department of...

The Earth is trembling underneath Lake Erie. Nine weak, shallow earthquakes have already struck central Lake Erie in the first weeks of 2022, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which, alongside the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), tracks seismic activity in the region. The quake epicenters are clustered about two miles offshore of Lake County east of Cleveland. They range from 1.3 to 3.0 in magnitude and some are being felt locally on shore. Quake depths range from 2.1 to 7.4 kilometers under the surface. The most recent quake was a 2.4 magnitude on Feb. 4. Ohio DNR seismologist...

Just a quick discussion. I've done a lot of scuba diving in the Great Lakes (mostly Huron, some in Superior). Most don't realized it's rich underwater history of many shipwrecks, many very well preserved due to the cold fresh water instead of salt. Before cars and roadways were abundant, people traveled by ship quite often. However there were quite a few large storms in the early 1900's that sent a number of ships to watery graves, some well past the 130' limit most advanced recreational divers would try for. Anyone know where there's a good sub manufacturer that could explore...

Confronted by an army of tiny, slanted pillars of frozen sand, carved by the harsh winds on the shores of Lake Michigan, nature photographer Joshua Nowicki knew he had spotted something extraordinary. The marketing photographer, who snaps landscapes for a living, heads down to the lake almost every night in search of opportunity. This particular December evening in 2021, Nowicki stopped by Tiscornia Park Beach in St. Joseph to photograph spectacular ice starting to accumulate on the lighthouse pier, but he found something far stranger. “Waiting for sunset, I was walking along the beach and happened upon them,” Nowicki told...

According to the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, 34 drownings were reported on the Great Lakes on Sunday, a 36% increase from last year, when 25 people drowned in the Great Lakes on the Fourth of July.

Hazardous Weather Outlook Hazardous Weather Outlook National Weather Service Detroit/Pontiac MI 507 AM EDT Sun Jun 20 2021 MIZ047>049-053>055-060>063-068>070-075-076-082-083-210930- Midland-Bay-Huron-Saginaw-Tuscola-Sanilac-Shiawassee-Genesee-Lapeer- St. Clair-Livingston-Oakland-Macomb-Washtenaw-Wayne-Lenawee-Monroe- 507 AM EDT Sun Jun 20 2021 This hazardous weather outlook is for southeast Michigan. .DAY ONE...Today and Tonight Severe thunderstorms are likely across all of southeast Michigan tonight mainly after 8 PM. There is a marginal risk in the Tri Cities and northern Thumb, a slight risk across the I-69 corridor, and an enhanced risk mainly from the M-59 corridor south through metro Detroit to the Ohio border. There is a chance of tornadoes and large hail...

When a major city such as Toronto experiences above average precipitation during a season, it doesn't necessarily mean water levels in a surrounding lake will also be higher than usual. However, when we look at the Great Lakes basin as a whole, this will have more of an effect on lake levels. Case in point is Lake Ontario. While Toronto received a slightly above normal snowfall amount this winter, with below normal rainfall, the entire basin saw below average precipitation. This helped to keep water levels at bay, especially compared to prior years. In fact, Lake Ontario is forecast to...

Down, down, down. In three minutes, the skip drops nearly 1,700 feet below Cleveland. Then the giant metal door swings open, and you’re deposited in an other-world, with walls, ceiling and floor made of salt. Dirty brown salt at the Cargill mine’s entrance, where the rock has absorbed diesel fumes and dust for more than 60 years. Pristine white, with glimmering flecks, at the mine’s far reaches, 3 miles north, under Lake Erie. “I look out at the water, and it’s like, man, we’re under that!” said Cargill employee Cachet Hilton, 45. Every day, the 5-mile wide mine gets a...

LANSING, MI -- Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is shutting down Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline, citing multiple violations by the company of the 1953 easement with the state, along with a duty to protect the Great Lakes. Enbridge now has until May 2021 to stop the flow of oil and natural gas through the Great Lakes, according to a statement from Whitmer. “Here in Michigan, the Great Lakes define our borders, but they also define who we are as people,” Whitmer said in a statement. “Enbridge has routinely refused to take action to protect our Great Lakes and the millions of Americans...

It was forty-five years ago tonight that the Edmund Fitzgerald, the largest ship plying the Great Lakes, sank and took 29 good men to the bottom of Lake Superior."The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot. With photos of the vessel and her crew.