When the “Gales of November” shaped the farm economy
November 10 has a way of intersecting with U.S. agriculture in places most people don’t immediately associate with farms: the Great Lakes, the nation’s grain highways, and the mid-harvest calendars that still pace rural life. Two events in particular—one in 1913 and one in 1975—underscore how weather and waterborne logistics on this date have echoed across the Corn Belt and beyond.
November 10, 1913: The “White Hurricane” and the grain trade
By this date in 1913, the multi-day Great Lakes Storm—later known as the “White Hurricane”—had reached its deadly climax. Between November 7 and November 10, hurricane-force winds and blizzard conditions sank or stranded ships across Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie, claiming more than 200 lives. While many of the vessels were moving iron ore and coal, the storm also disrupted the late-season movement of grain—a crucial outlet for Upper Midwest crops before winter sealed the inland seas.
The catastrophe pressured shippers and authorities to tighten storm-warning practices and upgrade vessel safety. For agriculture, those changes mattered: the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence route (long before the seaway’s 1959 opening extended deep-water access to the Atlantic) was and remains a key path for wheat, corn, and soybeans from ports like Duluth–Superior, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Toledo. The 1913 storm’s legacy is part of why late-fall grain logistics on the Lakes are orchestrated with a watchful eye on November weather windows.
November 10, 1975: Edmund Fitzgerald and a supply-chain reality check
On this date in 1975, the bulk freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a fierce Lake Superior storm, taking all 29 aboard. The Fitzgerald was carrying taconite iron ore pellets, not grain—but the loss underscored a truth farm country knows well: the same fall gales that challenge ore carriers challenge grain freighters, too. Every November storm that closes a harbor, delays a pilot, or piles seas on a laden laker can ripple back to country elevators and rail sidings, where bins are filling and basis is moving.
In the decades since, navigation rules, forecasting, and onboard technology have continued to improve, and the navigation season is still planned to keep grain moving before ice returns. The memory of November 10, 1975, remains a benchmark for how quickly a logistics plan can be rewritten by weather.
Seasonal turning point on the farm calendar
Beyond the water, November 10 historically lands at a pivotal moment in the farm year. Across much of the Midwest and Plains, corn and soybean harvests are either in the home stretch or racing a weather front. In the South and Appalachia, the onset of “hog-killing weather”—the first string of hard frosts that favored safe butchering and curing—traditionally arrived around early to mid-November. Families rendered lard, packed sausages, and salted hams in a seasonal ritual that fed households through winter.
This is also the time communities once gathered for corn shuckings and cane boilings, exchanging labor and news as the year’s last major field jobs wrapped up. While modern refrigeration, processors, and custom harvest crews have changed the scene, the cadence of early November still carries that same urgency: finish fieldwork before the next weather window closes.
When the numbers land on Nov. 10: The market’s November reset
Another reason this date feels familiar to producers and traders: USDA’s November Crop Production and World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates routinely publish in the November 9–11 window. In years when the release lands on the 10th, the midday updates can and do reset expectations on yields, ending stocks, and exports—moving futures within minutes and reshaping cash bids by evening.
That pattern has made November 10 one of those days when a grower might finish a field in the morning and revisit marketing plans after lunch. It’s a modern counterpart to the older, seasonal markers that have long defined this week in farm country.
Why it still matters
The threads running through November 10—weather on big water, late-harvest logistics, and pivotal market information—remain tightly woven into U.S. agriculture. Grain still rides the Lakes and the river system to export. Fall storms still dictate windows for barge tows and lakers. And mid-November reports still translate fresh field conditions into numbers that inform price, storage, and freight decisions.
In that sense, today doesn’t just point to moments in the past; it spotlights how closely American agriculture’s fortunes are tied to nature’s timetable and the infrastructure that connects farm gates to world markets.