I recently wrote a #GreatLakes tweet discussing the distinction between storm surge and seiches, following a huge surge on LakeErie. I was asked if a seiche was to follow, but the answer caught me off guard: #LakeErie may have huge storm surges, but it has a weak seiche game! I’ll reiterate: storm surge refers to water stacking up at one end of a lake during a large wind event; seiches are periodic sloshing of water back and forth in a basin. Seiches frequently follow storm surges, but they are separate phenomena resulting from distinct physics.