Cleveland is a great place to live for about three seasons out of the year. Unfortunately, our proximity to Lake Erie is both a blessing and a curse - the Lake Effect tends to intensify our winter storms into huge, scary events that can do some serious damage to the city. There have been a handful of truly terrible storms in Cleveland's history - in 1977, 1978 and 2008 just to name a few - but none were so disastrous as "The Big Blow;" the Great Lakes Storm of 1913.
The storm began on November 6, 1913. Built up by converging low-pressure systems from northwest Canada and the lower Midwestern United States and strengthened by the Lake Effect, it was bound to be ugly. By the time the storm had formed over the entire Great Lakes region, it was one of the largest winter storms ever recorded.
News of the storm spread fast, and Clevelanders braced for the worst, stockpiling perishable foods and battering down their houses in preparation. Life-vests like these became household items in the days before the storm reached the city.
The storm reached Cleveland on Sunday, November 9, and had already wreaked havoc on other Great Lakes cities like Detroit and Duluth, Minnesota. Cleveland received some of the most extensive damage any winter storm had ever caused, uprooting power lines and damaging homes and businesses with heavy snow and hurricane-force winds.
Cleveland was encased under snow and ice so severe that public transportation was suspended, businesses were closed and homes were snowed in. Since the telephone lines were down, there was virtually no way to call for help against the oppressive storm.
The city was without power for days, and the temperature slowly continued to fall. The gale-force winds gave a windchill that nearly reached -100 degrees, and since the storm had crippled the city's infrastructure, it would be days before anything could be done to repair the lines.
The worst damage the storm did wasn't on land, but on the lakes. In total, 11 ships were totally destroyed by the storm, like the Lightship 82 that was shipwrecked on Lake Erie. The high winds created waves in excess of 35 feet high; something that has never been matched on the Great Lakes before or since.
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The death toll was catastrophic; unheard of for a simple winter storm in 1913. Property damage is estimated at roughly $121,162,000 in today's dollars.
Cleveland has seen its share of storms since the White Hurricane, but nothing has come close to rivaling the tragic and explosive aftermath of this unforgettable storm.
There aren't many alive today who can claim to have lived through the Great Lakes Storm, but the memory of those turbulent days in Cleveland history lives on. If you know any stories of this epic storm, tell us about them in the comments.
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