Guide
The gales of November
Why late-season lakes weather matters, and what the November passage record actually shows.
What the gales are
Late autumn on the lakes puts very cold air over water still holding the summer's heat. The lakes give that heat up into the storm, and a system that would be ordinary over land turns into something that can run thirty-foot seas onto a freighter's deck in open water. The season has a folk name, the gales of November, and a canon: the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in eastern Lake Superior on 10 November 1975 with all twenty-nine aboard, and the storm of November 1913 sank around a dozen ships and killed more than 250 sailors in four days.
Both anniversaries fall in the middle of a working month, which is the part the songs leave out. The boats are still running.
What the record shows
November is a full month in the archive, not a pause in it. Across all seven chokepoints, November 2024 recorded 1,287 crossings and November 2025 recorded 1,305 crossings. Set against the October before it, November ran 7% below it in 2024 and 8% below it in 2025. Set against the December after it, the two years disagree: 1% below it in 2024 and 8% above it in 2025. On 10 November itself the archive logs 52 crossings in 2024 and 49 crossings in 2025. The gales close the season eventually, but they do not empty the lakes while they blow.
The shape of the fall-off is regional rather than general. Duluth thins first, 57 in November 2024 against 67 that October and 49 in November 2025 against 66 that October. The Soo holds close to its October rate, and Port Huron does not fall off at all, and its busiest single day in the whole archive is 25 November 2025, with 22 crossings. The lower-lakes trades keep working after the head of the lakes has gone quiet.
Why the boats keep sailing
The season is finite. The Soo Locks close in mid-January and the Seaway closes around the end of December, so every ton of iron ore, stone and grain that has to move before the ice does moves in the last weeks. November is the month with the most cargo to shift and the worst weather to shift it in, and the modern fleet is built for it: bigger hulls, better forecasting, and a vessel-traffic service that can hold a boat in a lee rather than send her across an open lake. The boats shelter now. They did not always have the warning to.
Watching in November
It is the best month of the year to watch and the worst to stand outside. Traffic is heavy and the light stays low and long. Nobody else is on the shoreline. Port Huron and the Detroit River are the reliable choices: sheltered, close to the channel, and busy right through the month. Duluth pays off only if a boat is actually due, and the piers there are the wrong place to be in a northeaster, because the same seas that make the photograph come over the concrete you are standing on.