National Weather Service Advancements Since the Sinking of SS Edmund Fitzgerald

DULUTH, Minn.- Today marks the 46th year since the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior amid a storm, taking 29 crew members down with the ship.

Weighing more than 13,000 tons, the American Great Lakes freighter remains the largest ship sunk in Lake Superior.

Officials from the National Weather Service say the deadly storm developed quickly, producing high winds. The winds then caused large waves, sinking the ship.

“Back then, observations were taken at only a handful of locations across the land, and observations from the lake were very little,” said National Weather Service Warning Coordination Meteorologist Joe Moore. “By the time you get into the fall, we pull a lot of the buoys that go into the water, so we had very few observations of what it was actually like on the lake.”

Satellite and radar advancements now allow the weather service to receive precise images more frequently. With this technology, they can now report changes within weather patterns every minute, compared to satellite devices in 1975, where they received these images only a few times a day.

“Our forecasts will never be perfect, but we have a lot more confidence now that we can say the winds are definitely going to be at the gale level—they’re definitely going to be 34 knots or greater, where they could be at storm level,” said Moore. “And what the waves will be like, we’re a lot better and a lot higher resolution in our forecasting.”

Now, many mariners out on Lake Superior observe weather conditions and report those findings back to the weather service once an hour.
This way, the service will have more accurate weather findings for each region of the lake.

“Now, We have a relationship with those offices,” said Moore. “Someone in their office, who actually, their sole job is working with Great Lake ships, and making sure that they have the weather information they need and to make sure that they can observe the weather. We give them weather equipment, and then they send us the reports.”

Advancements in technology and partnerships with mariners are an ongoing development for the National Weather Service and how they can do their job to keep people safe.