I can tell you from three personal experiences that the white squalls are very real. We called then “line squalls” because they whip the top of the lake right off and it forms a white line from horizon to horizon as is rushes at you. I have seen two
of them on Georgian Bay (off Lake Huron) back in the 50s go from calm to between 60 to 80 knots in less than a minute and In the early years of the 21st century one of them was recorded at 100 knots in places. We only got 85 knots out of that one on the
southeast shore of Georgian Bay but that was plenty. It knocked out power all across Ontario.

The line squalls or white squalls almost always move from west to east as a frontal system. They seem to occur on hot, sultry summer day and are followed by cold air.

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I called the local LPR (Liberal Public Radio) station when they had a meteorologist guest, and asked about the song. Nobody on the show that day knew the song, which did not help with communication, but he said it sounded like a line squall, and that
seems reasonable to me. As the sun goes down the air could cool from the top, and in a large flat area in a "sultry Summer calm" the cooler, more dense air might not break through for quite a while, so then when it does get started there would be a lot
of energy available. On a dark night I suppose there would be nothing to warn anyone until the wind hit the ship, and then what they would see is that the ##!%&# weather went from calm to 100 knots.

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On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 18:33:55 -0800 (PST), mandragoran75@gmail.com
wrote:

the local radio station had a meteorologist guest, and asked about the song.
Nobody on the show that day knew the song, which did not help ..,
but he said it sounded like a line squall, and that seems reasonable to me. >As the sun goes down the air could cool from the top, and in a large flat area >in a "sultry Summer calm" the cooler, more dense air might not break through >for quite a while, so then when it does get started there would be a lot of energy available.
On a dark night I suppose there would be nothing to warn anyone until the wind hit the ship,
and then what they would see is that the ##!%&# weather went from calm to 100 knots.

Perhaps a google search might provide some explanation ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_squall

" White squalls are rare at sea, but common on the Great Lakes .. "

John T.


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