The Great Lakes can be extremely dangerous, shipwrecks litter the bottoms of all of the lakes, and have most often been caused by misjudging the weather, which can get very very bad as you can see from the pictures. Also, the Lakes can act in ways not normally seen in the oceans, in Lake Michigan a sort of lake tsunami called a
Seiche has killed plenty of people both on the shore and on the water. Ice is also a big issue in the winter, the Canadian and US Coast Guards both maintain a big icebreaker on the lakes to facilitate shipping and the USCG also maintains a few smaller tugs and bouy tenders that can break ice as well.
Brrrr!!
