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According to the 1975 book Man Eating Sharks! by Felix Dennis, on a beautiful, clear summer day in 1955, one beach along the shores of Lake Michigan was packed with people looking to cool off and enjoy the sunny day, and one of these was George Lawson, a boy from Chicago. Lawson was out with many others splashing about and swimming off a boat near the beach when witnesses allegedly saw him pulled underwater, seemingly by something yanking him under and accompanied by the boy's panicked screams. Shockingly, a dorsal fin was reported by several others on the boat as...

The US entered World War II with 7 Aircraft Carriers and by the end of the war would have several times that. It's one thing to build ships, it's another thing to train the men that would eventually fly off those ships. So the US built some ships which would serve that purpose and that's where we come in. In March of 1942, the Navy purchased the steamer and started to convert her into an aircraft carrier. She was designated as IX-64. IX is the designation used by the Navy for ships that aren't otherwise classified. She was named the...

CLEVELAND — Sunday marks 44 years since the Edmund Fitzgerald sank near Whitefish Point in Michigan. Twenty-nine men died that day. (excerpt)

DULUTH, Minn. — As the West burns, the South swelters and the East floods, some Americans are starting to reconsider where they choose to live. For advice, a few of them are turning to Jesse Keenan, a lecturer at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. At least once a day, Dr. Keenan, who studies urban development and climate adaptation, gets an email from someone asking where to move to be safe from climate change. The messages come from people who are thinking about moving not because they have already been hit by catastrophe, but because they see the writing...

The discovery of one of the world's oldest shipwrecks shows that European trade was thriving even in the Bronze Age, according to experts. The vessel, carrying copper and tin ingots used to make weapons and jewellery, sank off the coast near Salcombe in Devon and is thought to date from 900BC. But it was only last year that the South West Maritime Archaeological Group, a team of amateur archaeologists, brought its cargo to the surface. The discovery was not announced until this month's International Shipwreck Conference, in Plymouth, Devon. It is thought that the goods - 259 copper ingots and...

Forty two years ago yesterday, the Edmund Fitzgerald left Superior Wisconsin loaded with 26 tons of iron ore – enough to build 75 thousand cars – on it’s way to Zug Island in Detroit. As infamously memorialized in song, it never arrived. Sailing directly into one of the Great Lakes most ferocious storms, she was no match for the lake’s fury which created sustained winds of hurricane force and 25 foot waves with troughs twice that. A mere 15 miles away from safe harbor it split in two and went down with its entire 29 member crew. Such are the...

WASHINGTON – The Centers for Disease Control is warning of the emergence of a far deadlier tick-related virus than Lyme Disease – one that kills 10 percent of those infected and permanently disables the other 50 percent. It’s called POW for short, or Powassan, and it, like Lyme, is carried by deer. Recent cases have been noted in the Northeast U.S. and the Great Lakes states. The virus can cause inflammation of the brain, leading to death in 10 percent of cases and permanent disability in 50 percent of cases. Signs and symptoms of infection can include fever, headache, vomiting,...

"We are holding our own.-- Last transmission by Captain Ernest McSorley of the S.S. Edmund FitzgeraldForty-one years ago tonight came the worst tragedy in the history of the Great Lakes. The largest ship plying its waters, the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, sank in a horrific November storm. On her ride to the bottom she took all 29 of her crew with her. The following year, Gordon Lightfoot released his haunting ballad "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".In memory of the twenty-nine men of the Great Lakes's most legendary vessel, and in memory of all who have taken to the waters to...

A Minnesota photographer captured a dramatic show on Lake Superior last week as massive sheets of ice met the shoreline and shattered. Dawn M. LaPointe shared the hypnotic video on Feb. 13 2016, on the Radiant Spirit Gallery Facebook page. In her post, LaPointe says she filmed the shattering ice near Duluth, Minn., for two hours in frigid conditions, ranging from minus-8 degrees to 3 degrees. That's minus-20 degrees to minus-8 degrees with windchill.

1/31 - Once again U.S. Senator John McCain [R-AZ] has his crosshairs set on the Jones Act with an amendment he intends to attach to a proposed energy bill that would eliminate the U.S. build requirement for tankers involved in U.S. coastwise trade. McCain hopes to attach the amendment to bill S. 2012, also known as the Energy Modernization Act of 2015, which seeks to provide for the modernization of the energy policy of the United States, and for other purposes. The submitted amendment from McCain would change section 12112 of title 46 of the United States Code (46 U.S.C....

United States Senators Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow sent a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Homeland Security calling for robust funding in the fiscal year 2016 appropriations legislation for the U.S. Coast Guard to design and build a new heavy icebreaker for the Great Lakes regio

SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. (AP) - Crews are working to clear a path through ice on eastern Lake Superior that's left freighters unable to move, including one that had a hole punched in its hull.......The cargo shipping season started last month on the upper Great Lakes.

We finally got a great look at the freezing Great Lakes in the last two days. The high resolution satellites give us images of the Great Lakes during the day, once a day. Saturday, Feb. 28, 2015, Michigan had clear skies when the satellite took the latest pictures. So it yielded the best look from high in space so far this winter. Friday's sunny sky also was a great day for MLive photographers to take to the sky and give us an up-close look at ice on Lakes Huron and Michigan. With the very cold weather Friday and Saturday, the...

Two more very cold arctic blasts are going to hit Michigan this week. Conditions may be right late in the week for rapid ice making on the Great Lakes. This makes me think we could make a run at record ice cover on the Great Lakes by this coming weekend. As of Sunday, Feb. 22, 2015, the total Great Lakes ice cover was 84.4 percent. Record total ice cover on the Great Lakes is 94.7 percent, set in 1979.

“Great Lakes ice is now running ahead of last year and ice will increase with more brutal cold coming,” says meteorologist Joe d’Aleo. “We are likely to have the most ice since records began.” “By the end of February the entire country east of the Rockies will have averaged below normal,” says d’Aleo. “Boston will have either the coldest or second coldest month in their history. It is nearly 13F below normal in Cleveland and all points east for February. Boston has the second most snow for the season and is very likely to be the snowiest ever by the...

According to NOAA's Great Lakes Surface Environment Analysis (GLSEA) the record for total Great Lakes ice coverage was set in 1979 with 94.7% coverage. Last year's winter almost broke that record with 92.2% and is currently sitting in second place. Just a few days ago the ice coverage sat at 60%. Today that number has jumped to 76.6% based on yesterday's analysis due the recent cold the area has been receiving. Their forecast for the next 24 hours is for that coverage to jump to 82.3%. This is within 10% of second place. Some long range weather forecasts I have...

The Siberian Express that’s imported northern Russia’s weather into North America is leading to a second year of fast-growing ice cover on the Great Lakes, setting up the Chicago area for the possibility of another cool spring. By Wednesday, the Great Lakes were 85.4 percent ice-covered, just above the 85.2 percent on Feb. 18 last year, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. With below-average temperatures predicted for at least the next week, the lakes could approach last year’s levels of 92.5 percent ice cover, the second-highest level since records began in the early 1970s.

More than 4,700 square miles of ice formed over the Great Lakes in just one night on Tuesday. The Arctic blast that swept the Midwest and Northeast saw a near-record amount of Lake Ontario was iced over, with just 20 per cent of open water left. Overall 82 percent of the five water bodies sealed up. Temperatures are expected to drop again on Thursday night, leading forecasters to predict that figure to climb significantly by Friday morning.

<p>The latest cold snap has almost all of Lake Erie covered by ice.</p> <p>The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory says ice has formed across close to 94 percent of the lake. That's the highest percentage out of all of the Great Lakes.</p>

"In January 2013, Lake Michigan hit its lowest water mark ever. Just two years later, the big lake has seen what some are calling an unparalleled turnaround. “We’re up almost two feet from there. Last fall, we had an unprecedented event where lake levels continued to rise through the fall. It has not rebounded this quickly I think in any recorded history that we have,” said Chris Schropp of the U.S Army Corps of Engineers."