Again tomorrow night, for the 24th year in a row, we will be holding the Edmund Fitzgerald memorial beacon lighting ceremony at Split Rock Lighthouse.  This year the weather is supposed to be polar opposites of what it was 34 years ago when the mighty Fitz went down in heavy seas during an early winter gale.

This is the event of the year for me and all of the staff at Split Rock that really resonates and brings home the reason for the lighthouse being built on this rocky point.  We enjoy seeing visitors who have become old friends and who have returned to the site each year on November 10 to experience Lake Superior in different weather and with a little different emphasis than a summer visit has.

So, even though the temperature will be in the 50’s and the sun will be out it will still be November.  The sun will reflect off of the lake at a very low angle and it will dip behind Day Hill at 4:37 p.m.  The long dusk allows for the lighthouse beacon to add its glow to what promises to be a glorious sunset.

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Did you know that even though the lighthouse is closed for the season the Visitor Center, with exhibits, the 22-minute film and museum store, is open all winter, Thursday - Monday from 11 AM - 4 PM?  New product for the store is arriving weekly in anticipation of our winter friends as well as the up coming Centennial.  Stop in to say hello and enjoy the view from the Observation Deck.

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Back in the day, the light keepers at Split Rock and other Great Lakes lighthouses always had relatively easy duty during the summer months.  Short nights, warm evenings, and settled weather made their jobs easy at that time of year.

This time of year, late October and November, bring on the rain and snow and days and nights that the northeast winds howls in off of the lake as low front after low front bring in Canadian cold blasts.  This October has been the wicked sister to a warm and quiet September that took summer with it.

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Keeping up with this blogging business is a challenge.  Talking about life and times at Split Rock Lighthouse is the main purpose of this blog, but everyone here is so busy running to keep up with the high visitation, preparing for next year’s centennial and battening down for winter that chatting sometimes takes a back seat.  No excuses.

For those who have made it to the lighthouse and the North Shore this fall it has been a mixed bag of weather.  A record warm September followed a very cool summer.  Now, the first snowfall has come in the form of an inch or so last Saturday morning.  I spent last Saturday putting up the storm windows on our home in the middle keeper’s dwelling in a strong wind.  That job is always an indication that summer, and even autumn, are over.  Even with the freezing nights the fall colors have lasted a couple of weeks later than normal.  This upcoming weekend is teacher’s workshop weekend in Minnesota, which means the kids, and most of the teachers, get a four-day weekend.  This will also be the last weekend of the regular tour season at Split Rock.  Now, the next major event with be the Edmund Fitzgerald Beacon Lighting on November 10.

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The visitors and residents along the North Shore and across northern Minnesota are relishing the fantastic weather that has finally caught up with us in September.  As across most of the region the spring and summer of 2009 has been very cool and now with autumn on our doorstep we are seeing some of the best weather of the year.  Today at the lighthouse it is calm, sunny and in the mid-seventies and it appears that that pattern will continue for the next couple of weeks.

At mid-day today a parade of about 30 vintage airplanes passed in procession past the lighthouse heading up the shore towards Canada.  The visitors at the lighthouse watched as these planes flew past, some of them uncomfortably close to the cliff.

The next three weeks will be prime for fall colors.  For those tracking the progress of the color transition southward the leaves along the shore are only about 10-15% changed.  Over the first ridge and back from Lake Superior the maples and other trees are about 30-40% changed.

The trees that get the most attention, and the ones most visitors ask most about, are the mountain ash.  They are now loaded with bright red berries and are attracting cedar waxwings and other migratory birds that feed on the berries.  As the berries ripen they tend to ferment on the branch.  When overripe, and the grouse and other birds eat them, they tend to fly a little erratically from the buzz they get from the berries.  That is when we need to be concerned about loosing windows to the grouse….and grouse to the windows.

With one month remaining before we button up the lighthouse for winter the staff are enjoying a little lighter visitation and the opportunity to spend more time chatting with visitors and finding out where they are from.  Now that kids are back in school we are seeing more retired people from all over the country.  In fact, the day before yesterday a retired couple said that they have visited 760 lighthouse around the country and this was their third trip to Split Rock Lighthouse!

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