As the sun is shining over northern Michigan this morning, I pause to remember…

The remembrance is bittersweet, which, for a meteorologist, most are. The storms that gave us awe for the power of nature, also tends to take life. So we balance our excitement of a storm with the recollection that some people die within these storms…

There are about 5 different storms when I was a kid that kept me on track to become a meteorologist:

1.  The April 3-4, 1974 tornado super outbreak
2. November 10, 1975
3. The Winter storm of January 1977
4. The Winter storm of January 1978
5. The tornado outbreak of May 31, 1985

The storm was truly remarkable, with a low pressure of 978mb when the storm’s center moved to just southwest of James Bay, which allowed for the hurricane force northwest winds over Lake Superior and rest of the Upper Great Lakes.

The hurricane gusts reached into southwest lower Michigan. Those gusts stirred up the ashes in our fire place, which had a set of glass doors on them, and left what looked like ghostly imprints of dancers.

Of course, later we would learn via Harry Reasoner and ABC News (probably WZZM out of GRR as well) that the S/S Edmund Fitzgerald was missing and was eventually found in 530 ft of water north of Whitefish Point.