The Witch of November is the name given to the winds that blow across the Great Lakes in Autumn. Gordon Lightfoot's song Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald makes reference to the term. Sometimes the term is November Witch. When the History Channel featured Great Lakes shipwrecks, they used the term November Witch almost exclusively. Similar "witches" have caused numerous shipwrecks over the years. The winds are caused by intense low-pressure systems moving near the Great Lakes. The system is often fueled by very cold Canadian/Arctic air pulled from the north or northwest meeting warm Gulf air pulled from the south.
The systems can be as intense as hurricanes. The storm that wrecked the Edmund Fitzgerald was 978 mbar,[1] equivalent to a borderline Category 1/2 hurricane. Another storm that hit in November 1998 was 967 mbar,[2] equivalent to a solid Category 2 hurricane. A still stronger storm, of October 2010, brought Minnesota and Wisconsin record low barometric pressures of, respectively, 954.96 and 961.06 mbar[3] (both equivalent to a category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale) and lashed Duluth with 81 mph wind gusts[4] and 19-foot seas[5] during the night of October 26–27, 2010.