Great Lakes Storm of 1913 Fitzgerald" sank suddenly with all hands, without a distress signal. The storm was first noticed on Thursday, November 6, on the western side of Lake Superior, moving rapidly toward northern Lake Michigan. The weather forecast in "The Detroit News" called for "moderate to brisk" winds for the Great Lakes, with occasional rains Thursday night or Friday for the upper lakes (except on southern Lake Huron), and fair to unsettled conditions for the lower lakes. Around midnight, the steamer "Cornell", while 50 miles (80 km) west of Whitefish Point in Lake Superior, ran into a sudden northerly gale and was badly
Great Lakes for Lakes Ontario and Erie were created, along with what would become the Saint Lawrence River. The Great Lakes are estimated to have been formed at the end of the last glacial period (the Wisconsin glaciation ended 10,000 to 12,000 years ago), when the Laurentide Ice Sheet receded. The retreat of the ice sheet left behind a large amount of meltwater (see Lake Algonquin, Lake Chicago, Glacial Lake Iroquois, and Champlain Sea) that filled up the basins that the glaciers had carved, thus creating the Great Lakes as we know them today. Because of the uneven nature of glacier erosion,