When I heard the weather report Monday morning calling for high winds and possible waves on Lake Michigan of 10-20 feet, I felt compelled to drive over to the lighthouse at St. Joseph, Michigan for a closeup look. From the moment I drove through downtown and could just get a peak at Lake Michigan from the top of the bluff I knew it was going to be well worth the trip.
Waves crashing into St. Joe Lighthouse
Huge waves were a mottled brown with dirty whitecaps due to all the sand being stirred up from the wave action and were just pounding the shoreline. Even though they had put up the snow fencing just last week there were still foot-high drifts of sand all over the parking lot at the beach. At one point, on the drive down to the beach, a wayward seagull was blown by the 40+ mph winds into the side of my truck. It was just a blur of white and made a soft ‘thud’ against the truck before continuing on its journey (to safer environs, I presume).
Pounding surf at St. Joseph Lighthouse
I snapped a few pictures before the blowing sand drove me back into the shelter of my truck. The video below was shot from inside the truck with the windows down just a crack to get the sound of the wind and waves. I had the camera secured nice and steady, but the wind was rocking the truck a bit as you will see in the video clip. Oh, you can also hear my daughter commenting on the seagulls 
.
It was a fun time and a good day to visit the beach if you like to see what storms do to the waters of Lake Michigan. You can see more pictures from that day at my Flickr page.
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Great shots! Thanks for sharing.
I’ve got some old photos somewhere of a storm at this lighthouse (somewhere in my boxes and boxes of old print photos I suppose). Wish we lived closer so we could see the storm action a bit more often
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