Awesome pics from the storm

A friend provided these awesome pics that his brother-in-law took during the storm here in the Lake Erie Islands area a few weeks ago and he was kind enough to allow me to share them with you. They were shot from Put-in-Bay. I find them beautiful, haunting...and scary!

Approaching Storm

I snapped these pics this evening of a storm approaching over Lake Erie. There is endless beauty in the cloud formations. From one minute to the next it never looks the same, as though the sky keeps repainting itself.

Western Lake Erie deluged with rain; Waterspout spotted off Catawba

Photo submitted to media outlet by nonymous source on August 6th.

It started this morning about 1:45 with a big gust of wind. Then the rains came. It's now 3pm and they're still coming. Not that it never rains all day, but this is different. This weather system seems to be parked over this end of the lake and it's raining proverbial cats and dogs, unaccompanied by lightening and thunder.

The Catawba Island tornado siren went off at around 10am. Then this just in from toledoonthemove. The story is by Elizabeth Reed.

The National Weather Service in Cleveland has issued a special marine warning for Maumee Bay to Willowick until 11 a.m. on Sunday. At 9:30 a.m., marine weather spotters reported a thunderstorm producing a waterspout northeast of Catawba Island moving northeast at 5 knots.
Scattered showers and thunderstorms from west to the islands east to Avon Point have the potential to produce additional waterspouts this morning.
Waterspouts can easily overturn boats and create locally hazardous seas. Seek safe harbor immediately.

What astounds me, though, is that no one, I mean, no one in media was putting out any special reports. Now normally the Cleveland and Toledo TV stations will at least run those banners across the screen or put this little maps in one corner of the screen. A call to a relative in Toledo revealed that it had rained just a bit but otherwise they had no inclement weather to speak of, which could explain the lack of reporting.

But it's sure raining here, and it shows no inclination to stop anytime soon.

Freighters were no match for 1907 Lake Erie storm

I have this old postcard showing large lake freighters washed ashore during a storm on Lake in January of 1907 near Buffalo. I wanted to find out more about this storm that had unleashed so much fury so I did some google searching and found the following here:

On January 20, 1907, gale force winds swept Lake Erie. The winds were clocked in access of eighty-four miles per hour. For twenty-four hours, the winds whipped the inland sea into a frothy mix of foam and spray. When the storm had finished spewing its contents over the Niagara Frontier, it ended, retreating to the icy waters from which it had sprung. In its wake, the storm left the Buffalo harbor and port with a million dollars in damage. The beach of the Life Saving Station was littered with debris and stranded ships. Two huge lake ships, the Hurlburt W. Smith and the William Nottingham were stranded on the sandy shores. In the process, the Nottingham smashed into the hull of the Smith, sustaining major damage. Three people died in the collapse of buildings and one life was lost when drowned in the angry lake storm.

I wonder: what kind of damage that kind of storm would cause today?