Gale Warning in effect on Lake Michigan as strong winds can whip up 12-foot waves

(WLUK) — Lake Michigan is typically a gentle giant, but under the right circumstances, its waters can be whipped into a frenzy.

When the November storm begins to howl, Lake Michigan turns into a surging storm.

Typically, the waves on the big lake can clock in at a foot or two. However, the National Weather Service says waves late Monday night into Tuesday could reach 12 feet.

It takes certain ingredients to get such big waves on our watery neighbor to the east. The biggest driver of big waves on Lake Michigan is wind – and we’re going to have plenty of it thanks to this storm moving in.

Gale warnings apply to the entire lake on Monday evening and into Tuesday. Frequent wind gusts up to or higher than 45 miles per hour are expected.

The wind is the biggest factor in driving these waves, but there are other important factors. That wind has to blow for a long period of time – it can’t just happen for an hour or two.

Another factor is the fetch – which is how far the wind travels over the water. Longer fetch means a longer distance for the wind to transfer energy to the water. More energy means bigger waves.

And another factor could be sea ice. If the lake is frozen, it cannot provide that energy on the water surface.

We have all these ingredients in place Monday evening to Tuesday.

The winds with this storm will turn from the southeast to the south, which runs across a long distance of Lake Michigan, as opposed to a straight east or west wind.

Winds will be strong with gusts up to 45 miles per hour and will be strongest for more than 12 hours.

Combine that with a slight angle inshore and it could mean some pretty big waves hitting our lakeshore counties during the first half of Tuesday.