If you’ve been anywhere near Lake Erie recently — or viewing social media from a laptop or phone, for that matter — you’ve probably seen some weird things going on, such as normally submerged boulders exposed to air with no water around them or people walking on what’s normally the lakebed.

How’s it possible?

Because of a phenomenon that scientists call a seiche.

A seiche isn’t all that unusual. They’ve happened for thousands of years in the Great Lakes, especially in Lake Erie.

It’s just a fancy word for a storm surge. In the case of Lake Erie, water from one end of the lake can be pushed toward the other — Toledo to Buffalo or vice versa — when there are strong, continuous winds and enough pressure in the atmosphere. Lake water is literally pushed miles away, depending on which direction the wind blows.

Retired Ohio Sea Grant/Ohio State University Stone Laboratory Director Jeff Reutter has said in several talks over the years that it’s kind of like seeing milk or soup tip from one side of a bowl to the other when you pick it up and hold it at an angle.

Some experts from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who gave a 90-minute webinar about an upcoming seiche report on Thursday also likened it to how water sloshes around in a bathtub.

The word seiche itself means “to sway back and forth” in French, one of the presenters, Colleen O'Connell, a hydraulic/civil engineer in the Corps’ Buffalo District Office, which includes much of the Great Lakes, said.

“You'll see an amplification of waves during a seiche event,” she said.

The most recent seiche event in Lake Erie peaked at 3 p.m. Saturday. It left much of Toledo and other parts of shallow western Lake Erie, clear out to the Lake Erie Islands and beyond, with lakebeds of muck.

So much water was missing that people could walk on them.

At the same time, water rose in Buffalo and flooding risks grew.

That back-and-forth sloshing happens more frequently than people realize, but usually not in ways that are so visible.

The lakebed was exposed in Toledo’s Cullen Park, near Point Place, and many other shoreline areas.

In fact, engineers said during the webinar there’s now a National Oceanic and Atmospheric online tool that gives real-time information about nearshore areas with exposed lakebed.

But if you ever venture out to see what it’s like walking on exposed lakebed, be careful, Ms. O’Connell said.

“Don't spend a lot of time out there,” she said. “The water's going to come back.”

It’s always hard to tell if Lake Erie will oscillate and return to its normal water levels in Toledo and Buffalo within hours or days, she and others said.

Cleveland is kind of like the fulcrum, being the largest city halfway across the shoreline. Seiches don’t affect it as much as communities on the east or west ends of the lake.

Madeline Dewey, an engineer and planner with the Corps’ Buffalo office, said hydrologists study seiche events in hopes of trying to better predict flooding.

The Corps’ final report is coming out this spring. It is based on multiple gauges with at least 30 years of hydrologic data.

A 100-year seiche — a term for events with a 1 percent chance of occurring, not something guaranteed to happen once every 100 years — has the potential of raising or lowering the water level in the Toledo area by nearly six feet. That same event category can raise or lower Buffalo water nearly 10 feet, the Corps’ preliminary data shows.

The Jan. 13 seiche is considered “a fairly frequent winter storm event of a moderate magnitude. Water levels rose almost five feet in Buffalo.

“It's because of that sloshing effect, or bathtub effect,” Ms. Dewey said. “Intensity is lower in the middle near Cleveland because of that oscillating.”

Seiches are important because storm surges can cause flash flooding. They also can increase shoreline erosion.

In extreme low-water conditions, they could impact Toledo’s ability to draw in raw Lake Erie water through its intake crib.

The Corps presentation included information about a major seiche in 1844, which has been called “one of the greatest disasters” in Buffalo’s history because it resulted in more than 78 recorded deaths.

Lake Erie water levels can vary 12 to 18 feet, too, depending on the season. The lowest levels are typically during the winter, with the highest levels usually being in late spring or early summer, Ms. Dewey said.

“With reduced ice cover, we see more shoreline erosion,” Ms. O’Connell said. “Ice provides a cover.”

First Published January 19, 2024, 4:48 p.m.