Auchtoon!

Monday, November 10 is the 50th anniversary of the freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinking in Lake Superior during a storm, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 men. It was a tragedy and treated as such at the time. I would hope it would be treated the same now, but I have some doubts about how long cable news could stay on topic before spinning off to pundit land.

It’s not that I’m nostalgic. I’d rather be a Great Lakes sailor today than in 1975. It’s much safer now, due in no small part to lessons learned. And weather forecasting has improved exponentially. Meteorologists now have much better tools for seeing storms like the one that sunk the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The Detroit Free Press had an excellent article about that this past Sunday. The storm was a “Panhandle Hook.” The article explains:

“A Panhandle Hook, a powerful, low-pressure winter storm system that develops in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle regions. After forming, the storm initially moves east and then sharply curves, or “hooks,” northeastward, often heading straight for the Great Lakes region. It picks up energy along the way, rapidly intensifying and often leading to blizzard conditions with strong winds and heavy snowfall, especially north of the low-pressure center.”

If you look closely at the news ticker on the TV in second panel, I make a crack about the President blaming a modern-day freighter-wrecking storm on Canada. It may be imagined, but Trump being confidently, incuriously wrong is always predictable.