Polar Vortex

The cold over Lake Michigan does not simply arrive — it invades. During the polar vortex, Sturgeon Bay froze into silence, the air and water meeting in a cloud of steam so dense it erased the horizon. Temperatures fell to near -40°F, and the lake seemed to breathe. From shore, the red tower of the Pierhead Light barely glowed through the haze, and somewhere beyond it, a freighter crept toward the canal, moving slow through ice and wind that could take the unprepared in minutes.

On the Great Lakes, winter isn’t just hard — it’s final. Ice forms faster than you can react, lines freeze stiff, and the decks glaze over until the ship feels more sculpture than vessel. When the lake locks, escape narrows to the width of a channel and the light of a beacon. The history of these waters is written in the names of those who didn’t make it home.

Not far from here lies the story of the Rouse Simmons, the “Christmas Tree Ship,” which left Thompson, Michigan in late November 1912 loaded with evergreens bound for Chicago. She was last seen off Kewaunee, her rigging coated in ice, flags at half-mast, disappearing into a blizzard that swallowed everything. The cold took her and all aboard — a reminder that the line between duty and danger here has always been thin.

Even now, when a ship appears through the frozen haze of Sturgeon Bay, the sight carries that same tension — beauty and peril stitched together by wind and water. The Pierhead Light stands firm against it all, a single red spark holding out against the gray.

From the air, the scene might look peaceful. But on the lake, nothing about this season is gentle. The cold is not weather. It is a force. It is what decides what stays and what doesn’t.

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