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Lake Michigan’s deadly ‘freak wave’ of 1954 is Chicago folklore. Turns out it was a meteotsunami. And they happen pretty often.

On a Saturday in June 1954, Marvin Katz motored his cabin cruiser onto Lake Michigan for what was supposed to be a pleasant day of fishing.

However, when his father became seasick, Katz headed back to shore to let him off and settled for dropping anchor near Chicago’s Montrose Harbor, where dozens of people, mostly fishermen, gathered on a lakefront breakwater.

Waiting for his first nibble of the morning, Katz remembers feeling the boat lightly rock. Then he looked toward shore and saw the breakwater had nearly been wiped clean: Some people were clinging to the rocks, others were floundering in the mouth of the harbor amid an entanglement of fishing rods and bait boxes.

“It just happened so fast. The water rose in seconds,” Katz, an 87-year-old Wilmette resident, recalled nearly 65 years later. “It was like an elevator was pushing it up. We looked up and realized all these people were in the water drowning and there was no one to help.”

Katz steered the powerboat alongside a 50-year-old man struggling to stay afloat and pulled him aboard. In the time it took to rescue him, the frenzied cries for help quieted and no one was left above water.

In a matter of minutes, an 8- to 10-foot “freak wave” spanning from north suburban Wilmette Harbor to North Avenue Beach in Chicago had submerged the lakefront, killing eight people.

In the decades since that violent swell pummeled Chicago, it has become the subject of local folklore and, recently, the budding topic of scientific research. Today, scientists have determined the North Shore was struck by a meteorological tsunami (commonly called meteotsunamis) rather than a seiche, as originally reported.

Lake Michigan — long recognized as the deadliest of the Great Lakes — sees the most of these rogue waves each year. Chicago, the most populous metropolitan area on the Great Lakes, is drubbed by 29 meteotsunamis on average each year, by far the most of anywhere along the 4,500 miles of Great Lakes shoreline in the United States, according to researchers. By comparison, Buffalo, N.Y., on Lake Erie’s far eastern edge, experiences the second most with 17 per year.

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Unlike typical lake waves that roll by every three to five seconds, meteotsunamis can last for two minutes to up to two hours, dramatically raising localized lake levels and spawning dangerous rip currents that can carry swimmers offshore. Although many of these weather-generated waves are often modest in height — sometimes only standing 1 or 2 feet tall — their longevity can be formidable. But the 1954 wave, set in motion by a dramatic rise in atmospheric pressure and straight-line winds, was colossal, roiling the shoreline for 15 minutes, scientists say.

While these waves previously were thought to be rare, recent studies by the University of Wisconsin at Madison revealed they are quite common and sometimes responsible for a water hazard more familiar to Chicagoans — rip currents. More than 100 meteotsunamis occur across the Great Lakes each year, many prompting rescue efforts or causing significant damage to coastal infrastructure.

Not only has the threat posed by meteotsunamis been seriously underestimated, according to scientists, but the bulk of these waves occur in the late spring and early summer, overlapping with much of beach season.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Michigan, is working to create a forecast and warning system to alert boaters and beachgoers about meteotsunamis as they develop across the Great Lakes.

“Just like other waves, these things can be dangerous,” said Eric Anderson, a scientist at NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. “They can injure or kill people and cause problems for shoreline property owners. But there is a gap in our ability to forecast. One could happen tomorrow and a weather forecast wouldn’t be able to predict it was coming. We don’t have the capacity.”

Atmospheric origins

In 1935, Japanese professor Takaharu Nomitsu was the first to describe “tsunamis of atmospheric origin,” waves that were triggered by weather systems rather than earthquakes like true tsunamis.

The term meteorological tsunami was coined in 1961 by Austrian scholar Albert Defant.

Before the phrase became popularized, these catastrophic flooding events took on other names across the globe. Along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, locals referred to them as “sea bears.” In the Mediterranean Sea, near the Straits of Sicily, southern Italians called them the “mad sea” phenomena.

Although the magnitude of these waves is less than true tsunamis that are generated by earthquakes or landslides, weather-induced tsunamis are more widespread and occur more often.

“Meteotsunamis are not a unique thing in the Great Lakes,” said Chin Wu, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin. “They are everywhere else in the world: East Coast, West Coast, Europe, Asia. But in the Great Lakes, we are the one place where it turns out to be so dangerous, because sometimes you do not see the storm and it’s hitting you with no sign.

“This is more risky. And more risk is what we haven’t prepared for.”

Historical accounts have also erroneously described them as seiches.

Seiches and meteotsunamis are both caused by spikes in air pressure and driving winds, which cause water to pile up as a storm moves across a lake. But they differ in size and timespan. A seiche is a singular lakewide wave rocking back and forth while a meteotsunami is generally the width of a storm front and lasts for a shorter period of time.

Seiches, which can flood coastal areas for several hours, are frequently compared to water sloshing back and forth in a bathtub. A meteotsunami, on the other hand, has been described as being similar to the effect of running one’s hand across the surface of water in a bathtub.

Chicago’s predisposition to meteotsunamis stems from a combination of factors, including the intensity, direction and speed of storms, in addition to the depth and shape of Lake Michigan. The shallow waters and prevalence of storms make it a “sweet spot” for meteotsunami activity.

“Southern Lake Michigan kind of has a natural setting where the speed (of a storm) needed to create a meteotsunami is possible and the shape of the lake points them toward Chicago,” said Adam Bechle, a coastal resilience outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute.

Fast-moving storms capable of stirring up a meteotsunami move across Lake Michigan from west to east, guiding a wave toward western Michigan or northwest Indiana. When the storm passes onto land, the wave rocks against the shore and ricochets back toward Chicago.

“The risk of it impacting people goes up when it’s decoupled from the storm that made it,” Anderson said. “When a meteotsunami gets close, and it’s associated with lightning and a thunderstorm, people know to take certain precautions to protect themselves. When it pinballs back to the other side of the lake, it’s more hazardous because it could happen under sunny skies.”

That’s precisely what happened on June 26, 1954.

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A line of storms raced from Wisconsin toward southwestern Michigan and northeast Indiana faster than an express CTA train. In Michigan City, Ind., the Coast Guard warned boaters to return to harbor and the Army Corps of Engineers evacuated droves of people from a shoreline pier before the 6- to 8-foot meteotsunami walloped the shoreline.

Once the squall crossed over onto land, the winds died down on Lake Michigan, allowing the wave to double back across the lake with little resistance. About an hour later in Chicago, where the weather was fair and the waters were calm, hundreds of people along the lakefront were caught off-guard by a roughly 10-foot wall of water.

“When the lake gets angry, it’s usually a constant upheaval where the waves keep coming in one after another,” said Katz, the witness to the 1954 meteotsunami, looking out the window of his lakefront condo. “This was not that at all. The water just rose — straight up.”

The tragedy underscores the danger for cities along western Lake Michigan where the weather can be fine, but a bygone or faraway weather system could produce a meteotsunami.

“It’s a unique danger for the Great Lakes, because they are enclosed basins where (meteotsunamis) bounce across the lake, sometimes several times, until they decay and die off,” Anderson said.

The number of meteotsunami episodes could grow in the future as climate change creates conditions favorable for more thunderstorms capable of producing large wave fronts. But even right now, during this current period of high lake levels, the swift waves have the potential to be more menacing.

“A beach that was originally 100 or 200 feet becomes 10 feet or 20 feet, and people have a shorter time to respond,” Wu said.

Small waves still dangerous

While the 1954 meteotsunami is perhaps the most infamous example of the monumental size and force these waves can reach, much smaller meteotsunamis have proved capable of being just as deadly.

On July 4, 2003, a formation of storm cells unleashed gusts up to 50 mph on Lake Michigan, blowing through southwestern Michigan in 20 minutes, creating a 1-foot meteotsunami across Lake Michigan. Hours later, once the ominous storm clouds passed and the sun broke through, beachgoers descended on the lakefront.

One by one, swimmers began to disappear. Seven people, all with Chicago ties, died within four hours, including three members of a South Side congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses who drowned at Warren Dunes State Park.

Researchers say when the meteotsunami rolled away from the shoreline and caromed to the other side of the lake, it created a strong undercurrent that began plucking beachgoers from shallow water.

A study published earlier this year re-examined 94 fatalities and 298 rescues involving rip currents at Lake Michigan beaches over 15 years. Sixteen percent of the deaths and 12 percent of rescues occurred on the same day as a meteotsunami, suggesting a connection between the two beach hazards.

The Great Lakes saw 118 drownings in 2018, by far the most since the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project began keeping track in 2010. Director Dave Benjamin acknowledges the threat posed by meteotsunamis, but he said only one-third of the drownings in the region are caused by dangerous waves or currents. To him, it speaks to a larger need for overall water safety education.

Meteotsunamis are “sort of the sharks of the Great Lakes,” Benjamin said. “It gets national news, but there are only a small percentage of people affected.”

“States spend millions on top of millions of dollars in tourism campaigns to bring people to Great Lakes states — for revenue and taxes — but almost nothing is spent on water safety.”

Still a mystery

Tsunamis in general have been portrayed in illustrations as lofty, curling waves poised to tumble atop anything in their path. In reality, historical accounts describe a much stealthier encounter. Some researchers suggest it may appear to be a rounded swell of water, the true scope of which can’t be perceived due to its enormous size.

“When you look at old events, it really speaks to that nature of this phenomenon,” Anderson said. “These seem to appear out of nowhere. A lot of times it doesn’t seem like it’s connected to any kind of reality because these waves are beyond the scale of what we can see.”

Though Lake Michigan experiences the most meteotsunamis of any of the Great Lakes with an average of 51 events annually, other shorelines across the region are not immune.

On Lake Erie, near Cleveland, a 7-foot meteotsunami washed three swimmers more than a half-mile offshore before they could be rescued in 2012. On Lake Superior, one overran the Soo Locks, paralyzing shipping operations and prompting evacuations of shoreline homes in Canada in 2014.

According to experts, the only verified photographic evidence of a meteotsunami event on the Great Lakes was captured last year in Ludington, Mich., by seasoned outdoor photographer Todd Reed.

When the skies darkened over Ludington in April 2018, Reed drove to the beachfront, where he noticed the breakwater leading to the city’s historic lighthouse was flooded. Through hail and rain, he snapped a few photos from Stearns Park Beach and moved to a different vantage point.

About 10 minutes later, Reed returned to his original position to find the water had receded and the rock pilings were once again exposed. While Reed thought he’d witnessed a seiche, scientists say he actually captured one of two meteotsunamis that struck Ludington on the same day.

Meteorological tsunami

The Ludington, Mich., breakwater was underwater for a short time April 13, 2018, at the height of a meteorological tsunami on Lake Michigan. Todd Reed photographed the flooded pier from Stearns Park moments after a hail and rainstorm swept ashore. Only 9 minutes later, Reed captured the much-lower-than-normal water level as the floodwaters washed back into Lake Michigan. According to experts, this is the only verified photographic evidence of a meteorological tsunami event on the Great Lakes. Todd Reed photo.

“You almost don’t realize what’s happening, and I think that’s part of the danger,” said Reed, a former photographer with The Ludington Daily News and a longtime Coast Guard reservist. “Fortunately no fishermen were on the pier to the lighthouse, because that’s an eighth of a mile you would have to had to walk or run very quickly.

“Looking back in history, some of these instances where some people have drowned and maybe it looked like they were being careless, I think maybe the danger wasn’t as obvious as we might’ve thought.”

Katz, the 1954 witness, still struggles to describe the catastrophe. An avid lake-farer, he was used to being tossed in choppy waters. But this was different. This was insidious.

The coroner’s jury deemed the cause of death “an act of God,” according to Tribune archives.

Even 65 years later, he is still dumbfounded by the temperament of the swell.

“It was a humbling experience because you realize how powerful nature can be and what it can do in a short period of time.”

tbriscoe@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @_TonyBriscoe

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