Preparedness for all kinds of emergency situations is vitally important for first responders. While the fantastic forms wrought by wind & water draw folks onto Great Lakes ice, they also risk creating nightmare scenarios for rescue. South Haven Area Emergency Services shared these photos from the other day when several staff donned cold water suits and ventured into frigid Lake Michigan and onto the ice formations along the shoreline to practice rescue techniques.
Here’s a few more photos from the training and another from an actual rescue of a person fell who while on the Lake Michigan ice shelf approximately 100 yards offshore! Follow them on Facebook for the latest.
Here are two pics from Charles of the joyfully painted Mai Tiki Resort on Lake Huron in Oscoda demonstrating that you can find a little spot of summer in Michigan even on the coldest day. See his latest on Flickr & stay warm!
These photos of the St. Joseph North Pier Outer Lighthouse on Lake Michigan taken just four days apart provide a dramatic example of how fast cold weather & high winds can build ice! For sure follow Michigan Native Photography on Facebook for their latest & more great Michigan photos.
The only places not under an Extreme Cold Warning are the Southeast corner of the state – from Saginaw and The Thumb down to Flint, Ann Arbor and Detroit, as well as the Lansing and Jackson area along the southern rim of Michigan. Those southern and eastern spots are under a Cold Weather Advisory, as the cold is not expected to be quite as severe there.
The Extreme Cold Warning now covers the Upper Peninsula – where wind chills could plummet to -45 degrees over the next couple of days – and all of Northern Michigan and West Michigan. This extreme warning covers Grand Rapids, Holland, Muskegon, Traverse City, Gaylord and the Tip of the Mitt, too.
That’s a big yikes from me! Brian took this when we were deep in the polar vortex of January of 2019 from the South Pier in Grand Haven. See his latest on Flickr and STAY WARM!
PS: If you want to tune into the current scene in Grand Haven, check out the Grand Haven South Pier Cam!
It’s very rare that we have aurora alerts at the G4 storm level and rarer still that they disappoint so northern lights aficionados were pretty excited about the kP8/G4 Aurora Alert was issued for last night. While hopes were high & some good shots were taken, the actual output was surprisingly muted & short-lived. Our friends at EarthSky explain that this was due to the arrangement of the CME’s magnetic field limiting how much energy actually reached Earth’s atmosphere & shaping which regions saw auroras and which did not.
During the CME’s initial impact phase, the Bz briefly dipped strongly southward. So that allowed solar wind energy to flow efficiently into Earth’s magnetic field. This short-lived interaction quickly caused G4 (severe) geomagnetic storm levels, with Kp (another measure of Earth’s magnetic disturbance) exceeding 8.
Soon after the initial impact, the character of the severe geomagnetic storm changed dramatically. As Earth moved deeper into the core of the CME, the Bz – again, the orientation of the sun’s magnetic field – turned strongly northward. This sustained northward orientation sharply limited the transfer of transfer into Earth’s magnetosphere. And that was what restricted the auroras, despite the overall strength of the storm.
Jeff took this photo from Elberta Pier back in November of 2025 on a night the lights definitely did not disappoint! Follow Watermark Photography on Facebook and see more great shots in the A Little Night Music gallery on his website.
mLive shares that although Lake Michigan will still help “warm” lower Michigan this week, it will still be dangerously cold. The coldest air will come around the south end of Lake Michigan and plunge wind chills for southern Michigan into the -25 to -35 degree range Monday into Tuesday morning & it’s not much better for the rest of the state!
Detroit, Ann Arbor and Southeast Michigan: Sub-zero wind chills on Monday and Tuesday, falling as low as -15 degrees.
West Michigan: Monday and Tuesday’s wind chills could hit -20 degrees.
Northern Michigan: Wind chills could fall to -25 by Tuesday morning.
Upper Peninsula: “High confidence (>75%) for wind chills near or below -25F Monday morning and Tuesday morning for most of the U.P.,” the National Weather Service in Marquette said.“ Cold Weather Advisory for northern Houghton and Keweenaw Counties Monday morning.”
Andrew got these photos of freezing fog & spray turning the M/V John J. Boland into a floating icebox on Lake Michigan as she headed towards Indiana back in December. Follow him on Facebook and for sure visit his website for photos and information about his drone photography services!
Aubrieta shared this incredible shot of a sunset over Lake Superior in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Follow Michigan scenery on Facebook for her latest and view & purchase her work on her website.
The USCG Cutter Mackinaw is on its journey to Chicago with 1,200 Christmas trees for families in need aboard & scheduled to arrive today (Friday, December 5th). If you’re in the Windy City, you can head over to the Chicago Christmas Ship for all the info on the ship, the Christmas tree distribution, and how you can support this cool project.
The 1868 peak in sail-powered ships on Lake Michigan also marked the year the 123-foot Rouse Simmons was launched from Milwaukee’s shipyards. The ship was built by the firm of Allan, McClelland, and Company, one of Milwaukee’s preeminent shipbuilding firms …In the early 1870s, the Rouse Simmons joined the sizeable shipping fleet of wealthy lumber magnate and philanthropist Charles H. Hackley of Muskegon, hauling loads of lumber for Hackley’s fleet from company mills to the various markets around the lake for roughly 20 years.
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the popular German tradition of decorating an evergreen tree in the home was widely practiced, and it was not uncommon for a handful of lake schooners to make late-season runs from northern Michigan and Wisconsin loaded with thousands of Christmas trees for busy Chicago waterfront markets. Estimates of the number of Christmas schooners vary, but perhaps up to two dozen vessels in any season delivered evergreens to markets in Great Lakes states.
In Chicago, most vessels, including the Rouse Simmons, sold the trees directly from their berths along the Chicago River’s Clark Street docks. Electric lights were strung from the schooner’s bow to stern, and customers were invited to board the ship to choose their trees. In addition to selling Christmas trees, many boat operators, including Schuenemann, made and sold wreaths, garlands, and other holiday decorations. Barbara Schuenemann and her three daughters (Elsie is pictured above) helped make and sell these items as part of the family’s holiday trade.
You can read on for much more about Herman Schuenemann’s long career as “Captain Santa” which tragically came to an end on Friday, November 22, 1912 when the Rouse Simmons, heavily laden with 3,000–5,000 Christmas trees filling its hold & deck, left the dock at Thompson, Michigan looking “like a floating forest.” Sadly, the Rouse Simmons sailed into a powerful winter storm on the lake that sent her and several other ships including the South Shore, Three Sisters, and Two Brothers to the bottom of Lake Michigan.
Here’s a photo of Elsie Schuenemann at the helm of the Rouse Simmons along with one of the offloading in Chicago. Also be sure to check out a great video on the wreck of the Rouse Simmons by Richie Bravo.
Back in the day, Linda Godfrey would regularly share stories with me from her classic book Weird Michigan and her other works. Linda has regrettably passed on and her Weird Michigan website is lost, but here’s a seasonally appropriate tale of shipwrecks & lost love from my archives…
In the mid-1800s, the Lake Huron port and lumber town of Forester was a far cry from the sleepy, near ghost town it is today. The remains of huge pilings just off the scanty beach now stand as crumbling reminders of the great pier that once bustled with Great Lakes ships and sailors.
One of those sailors unwittingly started the legend that would be Forester’s main claim to fame after the lumber ran out and the ships stopped coming.On shore leave one day, the unnamed young man took up with a local girl named Minnie Quay, whose folks, James and Mary Ann Quay, owned the town tavern.
The Quays forbid Minnie to see her beloved, but the order proved tragically unnecessary after his ship became one of many that succumbed to Great Lakes gales. Minnie made one more visit to the forbidden pier after learning that news, and on April 26, 1876, at the age of 16, she threw herself into the water in hope of joining him in the afterlife. She lies in a waterfront cemetery now, next to the bodies of her father, mother and brother.
Legend says that she still wanders the beaches, moaning for her lost sailor, and that some have seen her standing waist deep in the water, beckoning others to join her. The former Quay home and bar still stands, giving Minnie’s ghost even more reason to linger.
“Since first arriving in the Great Lakes in the 1980s, invasive mussels have spread to all five lakes, and altered the ecosystem in profound ways. Today we understand that zebra and quagga mussels are an existential threat to the Great Lakes and without a coordinated response, they will continue to inflict harm on the environment, infrastructure, and critical species such as lake whitefish. Just as invasive sea lamprey require a coordinated, binational response for effective control, we must partner with national, state, provincial, Indigenous, regional, and local partners to find a solution to the mussel invasion. This bill makes that happen.” –Great Lakes Fishery Commission Chair Ethan Baker
US Reps. Debbie Dingell, D-Ann Arbor, and Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, want to increase funding for mussel control research more than fiftyfold to $500 million over the next 10 years. (EDITOR: They released it on Tuesday)
Otherwise, the “fish that we take for granted are going to just disappear,” Dingell told Bridge Michigan.
…The damage wrought by invasive mussels is among the biggest threats to the Great Lakes in history. Yet Bridge found that while the US government has spent mightily to combat other threats, the fight against mussels has received a comparative pittance.
The main funding program for Great Lakes science has devoted an average of less than $1 million annually to the cause since 2010, according to spending records analyzed by Bridge. The federal government spends about 20 times that amount to keep sea lamprey out of the Great Lakes and has promised 90 times as much to build a barrier against invasive carp.
Read on for much more & kudos to these two Representatives for working together to protect the livelihoods and meals of Michiganders!
The photos are from Michigan Sea Grant and the one of the boat moored was taken by Brandon Schroeder. Sea Grant is an excellent organization that works hard for Michigan waters and the Great Lakes as a whole!
