EXPERTS ADVISORY

Edmund Fitzgerald, 1971. Image credit: Greenmars [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsANN ARBOR—The 40th anniversary of the sinking of the Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald during a Lake Superior storm, with the loss of its entire crew of 29, is Nov. 10.

University of Michigan Great Lakes oceanographer Dave Schwab has written about the extreme weather conditions during that November 1975 storm and—starting shortly after that tragedy—he led the development of a system that today provides detailed forecast maps of Great Lakes weather conditions up to 10 days in advance.

Schwab joined the U-M Water Center as a research scientist in 2013.

In May 2006 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Schwab and two co-authors published a paper titled “Reexamination of the 9-10 November 1975 ‘Edmund Fitzgerald’ storm using today’s technology.” The authors combined meteorological observations from the storm with modern numerical weather prediction models to determine the most likely weather conditions throughout the storm.

Conditions on Lake Superior deteriorated rapidly during the afternoon of Nov. 10, 1975, as the Edmund Fitzgerald made its way toward the shelter of Whitefish Bay. By that evening, sustained winds near 50 knots (57.5 mph) encompassed most of southeast Lake Superior, with more localized sustained winds in excess of 60 knots (69 mph) and observed wind gusts in excess of hurricane force, Schwab and his co-authors wrote.

Those winds generated waves in excess of 7.5 meters (24.7 feet), which moved from west to east across southeast Lake Superior, nearly perpendicular to the documented track of the Edmund Fitzgerald. About 7:15 p.m. Eastern Time on Nov. 10, the Edmund Fitzgerald was lost with all hands, “coincident in both time and location with the most severe simulated and observed conditions on Lake Superior during the storm,” according to Schwab and his co-authors, Thomas Hultquist and Michael Dutter.

Before joining the U-M Water Center, Schwab was a research scientist and division chief at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor for 37 years. He is an expert on hydrodynamic modeling of the Great Lakes and other coastal regions. His work has covered a wide range of topics in geophysical fluid dynamics including theoretical, numerical and observational investigations of circulation, thermal structure, seiches, storm surges, wind waves and air-sea interaction.

Schwab started his career as a NOAA Great Lakes oceanographer in the summer of 1975, just months before the Edmund Fitzgerald sank. In 1976, U.S. Rep. Philip Ruppe of Michigan initiated a congressional hearing about the capabilities of the Coast Guard for rescuing ships on the Great Lakes. Ruppe was also instrumental in the establishment of NOAA’s Great Lakes buoy network, which consisted of eight weather buoys in all five lakes in 1980.

“The development of the computer models behind our wave forecasts relied heavily on data from the NOAA Great Lakes weather buoys,” Schwab said. “One of the highlights of my career was leading the development of the Great Lakes Coastal Forecasting System, which now provides forecast maps of wave conditions up to 10 days in advance.”

More information:

• May 2006 paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (PDF)
• NOAA’s Great Lakes Coastal Forecasting System
• Dave Schwab