High water levels are wreaking havoc in the Great Lakes

Rita Alton has an unusual morning routine these days: Wake up. Get dressed. Go outside to see if her house is closer to tumbling down an 24.4-metre cliff into Lake Michigan.

When her father built the 93-square-metre, brick bungalow in the early 1950s near Manistee, Michigan, more than an acre of land lay between it and the drop-off overlooking the giant freshwater sea. But erosion has accelerated dramatically as the lake approaches its highest levels in recorded history, hurling powerful waves into the mostly clay bluff.

Now, the jagged clifftop is about 2.5 metres from Alton's back deck.

"It's never been like this, never," she said on a recent morning, peering down the snow-dusted hillside as bitter gusts churned surf along the shoreline below. "The destruction is just incredible."

On New Year's Eve, an unoccupied cottage near Muskegon, Michigan, plunged from an embankment to the water's edge. Another down the coast was dismantled a month earlier to prevent the same fate.

High water is wreaking havoc across the Great Lakes, which are bursting at the seams less than a decade after bottoming out. The sharp turnabout  is fueled by the region's wettest period in more than a century that scientists say is likely connected to the warming climate. No relief is in sight, as forecasters expect the lakes to remain high well into 2020 and perhaps longer.

"We're seeing inflows to the Great Lakes system that are just eclipsing anything we've seen before" said Rob Caldwell, Canadian Secretary of the International Lake Superior Board of Control. "The likelihood is high that we're going to continue to see records being broken in months to come."

The toll is extensive already: homes and businesses flooded; roads and sidewalks crumbled; beaches washed away; parks were rendered unusable. Docks that boats previously couldn't reach because the water was too shallow are now submerged.

"Obviously the people living along those shorelines are in trouble but are there other concerns we're seeing ... the beaches are in trouble, the marinas, tourists tend to stay away recreational boaters are impacted as well," said Caldwell. 

"Even shipping companies are struggling at times like this."

The situation is inspiring soul-searching over how to cope with a long-term challenge unique to the region. While communities along ocean coasts brace for rising seas, experts say the Great Lakes can now expect repeated, abrupt swings between extreme highs and lows.

"It wasn't long ago they were worried about Lake Michigan drying up. Now it's full," said Rich Warner, emergency services director for Muskegon County in MI. "All these ups and downs — I don't know if that's something you can truly plan for."

Record-setting rise

Levels are always changing in the Great Lakes, and they typically decline in fall and winter, then rise in spring and summer as melting snow and rainfall replenish them. Broader fluctuations take place over longer periods. Levels surged in the 1980s before dropping sharply in the 2000s.

But increasingly, the highs are higher and the lows lower — and the variations happen faster. Lakes Superior, Huron and Michigan had bigger jumps between 2013-14 than during any comparable period. It took just seven years to go from record slumps to all-time peaks.

Lakes Ontario and Erie last year reached their highest points since record keeping began in 1918. Superior surpassed several all-time monthly averages and did so again in January. Lakes Huron and Michigan did likewise last month, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Detroit, MI.

This season has seen a release of record amounts of water from Lake Ontario during January and February, but inflows have equally set records, according to the International Lake Ontario – St. Lawrence River Board.

"The continuing trend of extremely high water supplies, which has now lasted over three years, continues to hamper the board's efforts to help reduce flood risks throughout the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River System," the organization reported in a press release. 

Even Ontario, where a hydropower dam provides more stability, has experienced record highs twice in the past three years.

"That's not supposed to happen," said Drew Gronewold, a University of Michigan hydrologist. "That lake is carefully regulated."

Changing climate

Climate change is believed to influence water temperatures and precipitation, which wage a constant tug-of-war with lake levels. Warmer water boosts evaporation, which pushed levels downward about 20 years ago. But as the atmosphere warms, it sucks up more moisture from other regions and dumps it into the lakes, filling them back up.

"Those two forces are increasing in intensity at the same time," suggesting the up-and-down shifts may become more extreme, Gronewold said.

How long before the waters recede is anyone's guess. The Army Corps predicts the lakes will exceed their long-term averages through June. Michigan and Huron already are 43 cm higher than a year ago.

Another ominous sign: Ice cover is light this winter. Shoreline ice provides a buffer against pounding waters. In its absence, Chicago's Lake Michigan waterfront was battered by waves reaching 7 metres high during a mid-January storm.

That means the potential for further damage will increase as spring snowmelt and rains arrive, said Ethan Theuerkauf, a Michigan State University geologist.

"This would include extensive beach, dune and bluff erosion, but also damage to coastal infrastructure and more lakefront homes falling in," he said. 

The recent surge also has rekindled longstanding debates over what government can do to control levels — particularly on Lake Ontario, where they're partially regulated by outflows to the St. Lawrence River through a hydropower dam. A U.S.-Canadian commission oversees how much water leaves the lake, based on the needs of competing interests such as shoreline homeowners, commercial shippers and wetlands.

Meanwhile, some people living along Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are demanding that Canada stop releasing water from two hydro projects into Lake Superior, even though it has elevated levels only by a few inches since the 1940s. 

"Every inch counts," said Don Olendorf, a leader of a property owners' group pushing for the change. His house is about 9 metres from the edge of an eroding Lake Michigan bluff.

Alton, whose house is precariously close to the Manistee-area cliff, said she can't afford to move it. She has pleaded for help from local officials without success.

"At some point I'm going to have to leave," she said, "because it's going to go over."