It was July 20, 1945, twelve-years since moviegoers gazed in awe at the silver screen as the goliath gorilla known as King Kong battled biplanes flying near the pinnacle of the 1,454-foot-tall Empire State Building in New York City.
Lake Georgians must have felt a similar fright when they witnessed a giant waterspout, reportedly twice the height of the Empire State Building, passing over the 32-mile-long waterway.
Though the mid-summer 1945 storm dropped heavy rain and blew in strong winds, it miraculously caused no cataclysmic damage except for some roads and bridges being washed out. However, the tempest did create a meteorological phenomenon, one apparently seldom witnessed by residents along the “Queen of American Lakes.”
Newspapers across the region reported on the Lake George waterspout, a rotating column of spray over water spawned by a fierce whirlwind. This type of waterspout formed along a line of developing cumulus clouds that had evolved to the west of Lake George.
There were many varying estimates as to the size of the sinuous vortex, but possibly the best description came from Dr. Harry Sobotka, the chief chemist at New York City’s Mt. Sinai Hospital. The scientist was a guest at a home along Northwest Bay in the Town of Bolton.
Sobotka said he watched the strange-weather phenomenon as it first materialized. The clinical chemist explained that a “blackish gray cloud” appeared over Tongue Mountain. Suddenly, Sobotka observed “a black and rather narrow streak shoot from the lake up to the cloud.” It then began to twist-and-turn.
Sobotka noted that the water spiral reached a height of about 3,000 feet with a narrow diameter. The waterspout was 3 to 4 miles away from his vantage point and it lasted for only 5 to 10 minutes.
The New York City resident said the whirling water came quite close to the Sagamore Hotel in Bolton Landing. So, close in fact that Sobotka thought the resort guests could almost reach out and touch the mighty natural spectacle.
An Albany fisherman named John Thomas was out on the lake in a boat only a quarter-of-a-mile from the waterspout. Thomas called it a solid mass of liquid as though a fire hose was unexpectedly turned loose upon the unsuspecting lake.
Summer guests at Buck Mountain Lodge on Pilot Knob on the east side of Lake George reported that the waterspout first appeared over Crown Island, a small isle north of Dome Island. The cyclonic anomaly then seemed to slither down the waterway and moved north into the Narrows, traveling as a “snake-like funnel” before dissipating.
And so, Lake George communities endured the intensity of the giant waterspout of 1945, just as Gotham had survived the fury of King Kong in 1933.
A version of this article first appeared on the Lake George Mirror, America’s oldest resort paper, covering Lake George and its surrounding environs. You can subscribe to the Mirror HERE.
Illustrations, from above: The Sagamore Hotel in Bolton Landing; and an illustration of the waterspout by the author.
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