Pardon the coastal provincialism, but I'd been catching glimpses of this giant body of water that extended all the way out to the horizon and contained sailboats and it just dawned on me that that's not an ocean, it's a really big lake.
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Big Lakes = Great!
03 Aug 2007 03:24 pm
Comments (51)
That's right East Coaster, there are very large bodies of waters located in the vast flyover areas.
They're called lakes. And to further boggle your mind, they aren't salty!
from the Violent Femmes website:
Victor DeLorenzo met insane Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson at Summerfest in Milwaukee. Wilson pointed to Lake Michigan and asked Victor, "What ocean is that?"
John Cleese formed his opinion of Amercans' verbal ability as the Monty Python group were flying into Chicago. Terry Gilliam, the lone American in the group pointed to the lake and said, "Look guys! A bunch of water!"
That's how I've referred to the great lakes ever since. They're too big to be lakes, but too small to be seas. They are a bunch of water.
I live in Cleveland and although I have not had this happen to me I have had several people tell me that out of towners visiting have been surprised that they could not see the other side of the lake. One of them told me "I told him, that is why they call them Great Lakes".
The non-salinity makes 'em creepy.
It's why the folks who live around 'em are ugly at the median.
Humans do better in salty climes.
That's right East Coaster, there are very large bodies of waters located in the vast flyover areas.
Wait a second. Are you telling me that people have actually explored those strange stretches of wilderness between the coasts? Bizarre.
Don't jump in until you've checked the bacteria content, which creeps up during the summer.
Though I've heard that on a hot day it's nice to take a dip at Promontory Point, at the east end of 55th Street in Hyde Park
This is the standard coastal reaction to seeing the Great Lakes, and it never ceases to amuse.
Also, notice that Petey isn't exactly posting pictures of himself. Perhaps his median isn't so spiffy either.
Petey's a dunce.
Inland seas really.
Lake Michigan 57,800 sq km, 22,316 sq miles, is the largest freshwater lake (totally within) the United States. It is 307 miles (494 km) long and 118 miles (190 km) at its widest point. The deepest point is 925 ft, while the average depth is 279 ft.
Lake Superior 82,000 sq km, 31,698 sq miles, is the largest fresh water lake in the world. It is about 350 miles (565 km) long and 160 miles (257 km) at its widest point. The deepest point is 1,332 ft, while the average depth is 500 ft.
They are brand new. Left over from the last, and great, ice age. The glaciers, a mile high, made the earths crust sink
The natural fauna is long gone, never to be recovered. Invasive species continue to take over in waves.
The west wants this water and eventually they will get it. The Great Lakes states and Canada have a gentleman's agreement that no water can leave the basin. This agreement stands the same chance as the proverbial snowballs in hell.
The glaciers, a mile high, made the earths crust sink.
I don't think so (although I could be wrong). My understanding is that it was your basic glacial scouring.
I'd been catching glimpses of this giant body of water that extended all the way out to the horizon
When I was a kid, we took a ferry across Lake Michigan. It was a 4-hour ride. That's when I got a sense of the size of the thing.
Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the ruins of her ice water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams,
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered
Lake Michigan... bah. Everyone knows that the lake view from the north shore of the Upper Peninsula is far superior.
I had a friend who great up on the shores of Lake Ontario and it wasn't until she moved to the Atlantic coast for college that she grasped that the lake of her youth *wasn't* the ocean. I was present when the realization hit. Pretty funny.
The Great Lakes states and Canada have a gentleman's agreement that no water can leave the basin. This agreement stands the same chance as the proverbial snowballs in hell.
Great Lakes states include some fairly populous ones: New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan. Throw in a president with regional ties (Obama, Clinton, Giuliani, Romney) and there is a chance of a stronger agreement.
I think I am essentially correct on the basin being formed by weight. Think about it. Where did those thousands of square miles of material hundreds of feet go when it was pushed out?
Two Lake Michigan ferries exist. Ludington, MI to Manitowoc WI. A steam ship, 4 hours. Muskegon, MI to Milwaukee WI. A high speed catamaran, two hour trip.
Global warming may be a disaster but another ice age, now due would be worse. At least for Canada, and white homelands in general. Then again it takes thousands of years for the glaciers to really build up.
On another matter. Trent Lott says a terror attack on DC is coming so get out of town. Bush said today he's ordering congress to stay. I report, you decide, what it means.
Bush is going to Crawford again, right?
"The west wants this water and eventually they will get it."
They'll have to pry it from our cold, dead waterfront neighborhoods.
Former Wisconsin Governor Lee Sherman Dreyfus (of the famed "LSD" license plate) once responded to the notion of a pipeline from the great lakes to California by saying the could have all the water they wanted. In 12 oz. cans processed with barley, malt and hops.
Matt:
You really need to get out more.
I guess Gordon Lightfoot and the Edmond Fitzgerald were way way before your time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Fitzgerald
Fun poll: what geographic feature with which MattY is currently unfamiliar will he express wonderment over next? We've already got the "the sky's so blue" from the New Mexico journey, now we have the "it's a lake!"
I'll suggest s. Utah ("it's so red!") or the Rockies ("they're so high!")
MDS, you and I have one thing in common. Lake Superior's name is no mistake. Lake Michigan ought to be renamed Lake Inferior. Where we differ is where we like it from. I think Minnesota's north shore is the best lakeshore in the country.
I am so glad to see I have not been wholly forgotten.
Can no one translate "that's not an ocean, it's a really big lake" into a political metaphor?
Actually it's not a gentleman's agreement. It's already law in the provinces and will soon be law through an interstate compact. Several states have already passed it, though, as a compact, it will require the approval of Congress. Most compacts are approved on the basis that everyone wants their own compact approved.
The compact includes a ban of diversions out of the basin, including diversions in-state.
A diversion is, more or less, any way water can leave the basin, such as in bottles. The basin is anywhere water eventually returns to the lakes. e.g. through ground or river flow. The reversed flow of the Chicago River puts Illinois outside the basin, but Michigan, for example is entirely within it.
Lake Erie once caught on fire. Let's see your precious Atlantic Ocean do that.
Nixon said to his Chinese hosts,"It is, indeed, a great wall."
I'm cutting Matt some slack.
On the one hand, I can see why residents of the Great Lakes wouldn't want to see their water diverted to the ever thirsty state of California. On the other hand, it seems odd to me to hoard one fifth of the world's fresh water. Is there really a risk that a water diversion would drain the lakes dry?
First time I saw Lake Superior flying into O'Hare I was floored. I knew they were "great", but seriously!
Hey Naveen, that was Lake Michigan you saw, but what the hell. I was once asked by a college educated New Englander if the water in the Great Lakes was brackish. An idea that is absurd on so many levels I can't count them. A Chicago teacher accompanying young students on an air trip to somewhere reported a boy asking what ocean that was, as they approached O'hare. He lived two miles from Lake Michigan. .
Most people are oblivious to geography or geology, which is hardly a crime. They are more interested in people and the culture around them. Since survival today in the developed world has virtually no relationship to our physical surrounding's it's perfectly understandable.
Although it is correct that the Earth's crusts sank under the weight of the glaciers, it was in fact scour that formed the lakes.
"Wait a second. Are you telling me that people have actually explored those strange stretches of wilderness between the coasts?"
Yup. There is an article about it:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39274
Re: This agreement stands the same chance as the proverbial snowballs in hell.
Since it involves a soverign foreign governmment that agreement may well have some staying power. No amount of DC corruption and bullying can simply steamroll over Ottawa the way it could over state governments should they all just happen to be dominated by pliant lackeys of the ruling party.
Re: The glaciers, a mile high, made the earths crust sink.
I don't think so (although I could be wrong). My understanding is that it was your basic glacial scouring.
You're both right, The Lakes were formed mainly by scouring, but the Earth's crust was severly compacted too. It's been gradually rebounding ever since, which is the reason the area occasionally experiences mild earthquakes.
Re: Glacial rebound
Lake Superior, Michigan, and Huron once formed one giant lake all at the same level. Glacial rebound is making Lake Superior rise, and Michigan and Huron fall in their height above sea level. The pivot is Sault St. Marie.
Also interestingly, at some point Niagara Falls will erode away, destroying Lake Erie. (Likely on the order of 5,000 to 10,000 years)
Re: Also interestingly, at some point Niagara Falls will erode away, destroying Lake Erie
Why would this destroy Lake Erie? It might cause Erie and Ontario to run together into one large lake (drowning the Niagara peninsula), but unless the lakebed rises appreciably leaving a single river channel behind, and assuming the region stull gets plenty of precipitation, I suspect Lake Erie will remain in some form or other.
Lake Erie has an average depth of 62 feet, and a maximum depth of 210 feet. Niagara falls is 176 feet tall. So, on average, Lake Erie will disappear.
Of course, what's likely to happen is that whatever civilization exists in 5 to 10 thousand years will build a dam to keep the Lake Erie basin full of water.
In fact, a dam already exists to provide hydro electric power for the area. It diverts half of the water flow into it.
McCormick Place must have really pissed you off, I don't think you could take a picture of an uglier part of the building.
Re: Stm and Lake Michigan-Huron
Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are still one lake at the same level. From Wikipedia:
Hydrologically, however, they form part of the same body of water: they lie at the same surface elevation (580 feet), and the flow between them through the Straits of Mackinac — which are 5 miles (8 km) wide and 120 feet (40 m) deep — sometimes reverses from eastward to westward. If designated as a single entity, Lake Michigan-Huron would be the largest of the Great Lakes in terms of surface area, at 45,410 square miles, and would be the largest freshwater lake in the world. Lake Superior still surpasses Lake Michigan-Huron in terms of overall water volume, containing nearly 3000 cubic miles (13,000 km³) of water, compared to Michigan-Huron's 2000 cubic miles (8,000 km³), which makes Lake Michigan-Huron the fourth largest freshwater lake by volume in the world (the first and second being Lake Baikal and Lake Tanganyika).
So, in other words, Lake Michigan-Huron covers more surface area than 17 of the states. Its area is larger than Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Maine, and all the other states smaller than these.
Matt, you remind me The Truman Show. He thought he was on the ocean too, but he wasn't either.
And we won't drain the Great Lakes when there's enormous amounts of fresh water flowing North from Canada into the Artic Ocean.
Eventually, we'll have to either divert some of that flow to the Southwest or build nuclear powered desalination plants along the California coastline. Since Canadians can't vote here but Californians can, I know which one we'll try first.
Actually, the two biggest lakes I'd seen before visiting Chicago this June were both saltier than the ocean: the Salton Sea and the Great Salt Lake. So, yeah, it was pretty weird to think that the big body of water I was looking at wasn't salt water.
Yeah, typical ignorant East oast fuck. Go suck some water from the Potomac or whatever sewer you live on.
Matt,
If you have the time, you should take the 80/90/94 East highway to the Indiana Dunes, only about a half hour out if traffic is good. If you think the lake itself is shocking, wait till you see the gorgeous beaches that sit oddly sandwiched between the areas trademark steel mills.
Oh, and the bacteria level is really not that big of a deal. They test it every day, and it's a small price to pay for not having to deal with jellyfish.
But yeah, this is a very typical and irritating reaction that we have to deal with continuously.
Lake Superior (and probably Michaigan-Huron) is big enough to have a tide and tidepools.
The invasive zebra mussel has wreaked tremendous havoc on water systems and fisheries, but as a filter feeder it has also helped clean up the lakes.
1. This area gets referred to as the "North Coast" for a reason.
2. Lake Erie per se did not catch on fire, it was the Cuyahoga River in 1968. It should also be noted that this hasn't happened since.
Lake Erie never caught on fire. That was the Cuyhahoga River.
If you have the time, you should take the 80/90/94 East highway to the Indiana Dunes, only about a half hour out if traffic is good
I saw a T-shirt with a a crack pipe on it that said "Gary, Indiana Rocks!"
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Comments closed August 17, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
It took me years of living in Chicago to get used to the existence of a body of water that size that didn't smell of salt. I'm not sure I ever fully got used to it; seems unnatural, however gorgeous the lake is.
Posted by Jacob T. Levy | August 3, 2007 3:49 PM