Summer on the Swollen Great Lakes

Mitch Smith and Lyndon French 2 hrs ago

CHICAGO — Two rare birds, a major music festival and an overflowing Lake Michigan all claimed a beach on Chicago’s North Side. But there was not enough sand to go around.

© Lyndon French for The New York Times A beach on Chicago’s North Side.

The lake, which rose to levels not seen in decades, formed lagoons where sunbathers once lounged.

The festival, which would have featured disco yoga sessions and musicians across three stages, was canceled.

And the birds, one of only about 75 mating pairs of the endangered piping plover left in the Great Lakes region, lost their nest in the rising water.

With help from more than 180 volunteers who kept curious humans and errant volleyballs at a distance, the tiny, photogenic plovers recently built a new nest further inland, away from the swollen waters, and mated again. Three chicks hatched. Two survived.

© Lyndon French for The New York Times An endangered piping plover on a Chicago beach.

“How do we make things succeed even in the face of the most daunting challenges?” said Tamima Itani, who some weeks spent 20 to 30 hours protecting the piping plovers, including one harrowing moment when an off-leash dog ran straight toward the chicks.

Across the Great Lakes, high water levels have upended summer, swallowing beaches, closing in on century-old buildings and threatening wildlife.

“Long term, I don’t know how anybody along the lakeshore deals with it,” said Mitch Foster, the city manager in Ludington, Mich., where the rising water has closed roads, damaged homes and seeped into a museum.

There have been benefits, including for massive shipping freighters, which have been able to haul heavier loads across Lake Superior. Mostly, though, the high waters have caused concern, like on Lake Ontario, where the New York National Guard was called in to help with flood control, and along Lake Erie, where water has spilled into the streets.

The higher water, which set records this summer on some Great Lakes, could be part of an expensive new normal. Though water levels have always fluctuated, scientists have suggested that in the coming decades climate change could cause higher highs, with periods of intense rainfall and snow, and lower lows, with times of warmer temperatures and increased evaporation.

© Lyndon French for The New York Times Tamima Itani spent 20 to 30 hours some weeks protecting the piping plovers.

To understand how extreme lake levels have reshaped life on the water, a New York Times reporter and photographer drove around Lake Michigan. Over 1,234 miles, four states, two time zones and 34 counties, there were crowded hotels, packed beaches and landscapes worthy of a magazine cover. But in town after town, higher waters were leaving damage, interrupting routines and stirring fears that the worst may be yet to come.

Clinging to the Edge

OGDEN DUNES, Ind. — When storms send Lake Michigan’s waves crashing into Steve Coombs’s windows, his house shakes and his dog hides.

Once separated from the lake by a generous, sandy beach, Mr. Coombs’s house and dozens of others in the town of Ogden Dunes, about an hour’s drive from Chicago, are now protected by little more than a faltering sea wall and a small patio. Mr. Coombs fears that his house could eventually fall into the water.

© Lyndon French for The New York Times Storms on Lake Michigan have sent waves crashing into Steve Coombs’s windows.

“It is so unnerving,” he said.

© Lyndon French for The New York Times Parts of the sidewalk and a walkway have fallen into the lake in Portage.

The beach at Ogden Dunes was starving for sand long before lake levels rose — a product, residents and local officials believe, of a port that juts into the lake nearby, shifting the natural process that reshapes their beach over time. (Officials at the port say that it has no role in the sand shortage, and that other factors are to blame.)

© Lyndon French for The New York Times Water filled a road in Pentwater.

Now rising lake levels have accelerated erosion. Public walkways to the beach now lead straight into the water. Homeowners fear that their properties will never sell.

Local officials say they would need government permits and millions of dollars to fix the problem and pump sand onto the beach. So far, help has not come.

© Lyndon French for The New York Times The wooden shanties of Fishtown.

Residents of Ogden Dunes only need to glance a few dozen yards down the lake to imagine what the future may hold. There, in Portage, Ind., a multimillion-dollar beachfront development opened to great fanfare 11 years ago, but parts of the sidewalk and waterfront walkway have vanished into water. Sand dunes have been sliced open. Most of the beach is gone.

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Poster Comment:

Lots of pictures at source.

You must have a knowledge of historical lake levels in order to see how the current levels will react in the future.