Shipwreck emerges on Lake Erie amid high winds
Low water levels caused by high winds have revealed a piece of history. Take a look at this shipwreck on Lake Erie near Kingsville.
CBC – Top Stories
- A shipwreck was briefly revealed in Lake Erie after strong winds pushed water away from the shore near Kingsville, Ontario.
- Historians believe the sunken vessel could be the Demming or the Overton, both of which sank before 1900.
- The phenomenon was caused by a strong low-pressure system that created sustained winds, lowering water levels in the lake’s western basin.
- A local diver discovered and photographed the exposed shipwreck, sharing the images on social media.
A shipwreck that has long rested beneath Lake Erie’s waters was briefly revealed off Kingsville, Ontario, after high winds caused a rare weather phenomenon that made the lake appear to “vanish.”
Southwest winds pushed water from the western basin of the lake toward the eastern basin, causing water levels near Kingsville to drop and revealing parts of the lakebed, including the top of the sunken vessel. The diver who discovered it said historians believe the ship may be the Demming, according to a post he wrote in a group dedicated to ship junkies.
“Not an active ship, but this lady showed up a couple hundred yards from shore in Kingsville, ON. Thanks to the wind, I got to see a shipwreck without my drysuit today,” wrote diver Matt Vermette, sharing a video and photo alongside.
According to CBC News, the shipwreck was documented in newspaper archives dating before the 1900s.
In addition to the shipwreck, locals and meteorologists flooded social media with striking images of the temporary lakebed, highlighting the unusual effect of the winds across the lake.
How weather made this happen
The sudden appearance of the shipwreck near Kingsville, Ontario, was caused by strong, storm-driven winds across Lake Erie, part of the same system that produced blizzard conditions in Michigan and heavy lake-effect snow across the northern Great Lakes.
Over the past several days, a deep low-pressure system tracked across the northern Plains into the Great Lakes with tight pressure gradients producing sustained southwest winds of 20–30 mph and gusts up to 50 mph along the lakeshore. These winds pushed water from Lake Erie’s western basin toward the eastern basin, lowering levels near Kingsville by several feet and temporarily exposing the lakebed, including the sunken vessel.
“This is going to be one of the strongest ones we have had in a while, where there could be 3 to 4 feet of water pushed from the western basin of Lake Erie to the east,” David Marsalek, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland, told the Free Press on Thursday.
While the seiche-like event displaced water by several feet, it never fully became a true seiche, as the water returned slowly rather than oscillating abruptly back and forth.
Where is Kingsville, Ontario?
Vermette told CBC the shipwreck was discovered about 150 meters, or about 165 feet, off the coast of Kingsville.
Brandi D. Addison covers weather across the United States as the Weather Connect Reporter for the USA TODAY Network. She can be reached at baddison@gannett.com. Find her on Facebook.
