Thursday marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of what became a days-long storm that devastated the Great Lakes region.
The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, sometimes referred to as the "White Hurricane," was an extratropical cyclone created when two storm systems merged. The storm had winds of 90 mph and impacted the Great Lakes between Nov. 7 and Nov. 11.
Weather warnings at the time were generally limited to flags posted in ports along the lakes. While radio was available, many ships did not have wireless sets installed.
The result was 19 ships sunk, more than a dozen others stranded and more than 250 sailors killed. Twelve of the sunken ships lost their entire crews.
“No lake master can recall in all his experience a storm of such unprecedented violence with such rapid changes in the direction of the wind and its gusts of such fearful speed!" one post-storm report read. "Storms ordinarily of that velocity do not last over four or five hours, but this storm raged for sixteen hours continuously at an average velocity of sixty miles per hour, with frequent spurts of seventy and over."
Cleveland saw a lake-effect blizzard that dropped 22 inches of snow, most of it in one day, and left the city powerless for days after. Damage estimates for the Cleveland area were about $3.5 million, or about $85 million now.
Among the results of the storm was a demand for better weather forecasting, which led to changes designed to get weather information into more peoples' hands more quickly.