What makes the Great Lakes (USA) so dangerous for ships and swimmers?
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Honestly the biggest issue is that the 3 of the Great Lakes States (Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin) are renowned for *tons* of small freshwater lakes (and familiarity with casual boating) and people who think they can tackle inland seas just because they know how to put a boat in the water. That leads to a lot of poor boatsmanship, and given how many Americans live on/near the Great Lakes (e.g. the Chicago metro area is the third largest in the US), that means a lot of poor boaters.
You also get weird/unpredictable waves, but from what I recall that has more due to the bottom of the lakes (they were all carved out by glaciation) and how you get sudden rises/shoals coming up out of nowhere. They’re also large enough that, again, they’re honestly closer to freshwater inland seas, complete with currents and tides. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but again; lots of filthy casuals with small boats.
On top of that is weather; the Great Lakes aren’t that far afield of tornado alley, and thus while they don’t get that many tornados, they get a lot of the same weather patterns that *create* tornados, meaning supercells that can intensify relatively rapidly. And that’s not even talking about winter weather.
And then beyond all that; Lake Superior tends to be cold enough to give you hypothermia, even in the middle of summer. Michigan and Huron aren’t that much warmer out in the deeper sections.
They are enormous and they are cold They are basically freshwater seas and are affected by weather in much the same way, they have currents like seas and oceans, too. There are plenty of safe swimming beaches along all of the Great Lakes, but you’d never want to take your boat to the middle of one and jump off. They’d fish your corpse out if you tried.
The mistake is generally underestimation the sheer volume of trouble you can get into on these lakes.
The water is cold. The storms can be tremendous. They’re better thought of as inland seas than lakes, in terms of what sailing on them is like.
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