Plan B Forum

SIZE, DEPTH, WATERSHED, WATER QUALITY, etc
1. Lake Superior is, by surface area, the world's largest freshwater lake.
2. The surface area of Lake Superior (31,700 square miles or 82,170 square kilometers) is greater than the combined areas of Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire.
3. Lake Superior contains as much water as all the other Great Lakes combined, even throwing in two extra Lake Eries.
4. Lake Superior contains 10% of all the earth's fresh surface water.
5. There is enough water in Lake Superior (3,000,000,000,000,000--or 3 quadrillion-- gallons) to flood all of North and South America to a depth of one foot.
6. The deepest point in Lake Superior (about 40 miles north of Munising, Michigan) is 1,300 feet (400 meters) below the surface.
7. Over 300 streams and rivers empty into Lake Superior.
8, The average elevation of Lake Superior is about 602 feet above sea level.
9. The Lake Superior watershed region ranges in size from 160 miles inland near Wabakimi Provincial Park to only 5 miles inland from Pictured Rocks National Seashore.
10. The Lake Superior shoreline, if straightened out, could connect Duluth and the Bahama Islands.
11. The average underwater visibility of Lake Superior is 27 feet, making it easily the cleanest and clearest of the Great Lakes. Underwater visibility in places reaches 100 feet. Lake Superior has been described as "the most oligotrophic lake in the world."
12. The lake is about 350 miles (563 km) in length and 160 miles (257 km) in width.
13. In the summer, the sun sets more than 35 minutes later on the western shore of Lake Superior than at its southeastern edge.

GEOLOGY, FLORA AND FAUNA, CLIMATE, etc.
1. Lake Superior is one of the earth's youngest major features, at only about 10,000 years of age--dating to the last glacial retreat. By comparison, the earth's second largest lake (by surface area, and largest by volume), Lake Baikal in Russia, is 25 million years old.
2. Fifty-eight orchid species are native to the Lake Superior basin. In North America, only Florida has more native orchid species.
3. Lake Superior produces the greatest lake effect snows on earth. (Significant lake effect snows are a rare phenomenon, occurring--besides on the Great Lakes--only on the east shore of Hudson Bay and the west coasts of two Japanese islands.) Lake effect snows extend 20 to 30 miles inland, primarily on the Ontario shore southeast of Marathon, and from Sault Ste. Marie to the Wisconsin-Michigan border. Average annual snowfall in Michigan's Keweenaw exceeds 200 inches in places.
4. Lake Superior has been at its modern elevation for only about 2,000 years, when elevations of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron dropped, creating a rapids at Sault Ste. Marie.
5. Lake Superior has its origins in the North American Mid-Continent Rift of 1.1 to 1.2 billion years ago, which produced a huge plume of hot mantle where the present lake sits. The crust tore apart, leaving an arc-shaped scar stretching form Kansas through Minnesota, then down to Michigan.
6. Within its borders, Lake Superior has both the thickest, and nearly the thinnest, crust found anywhere in North America.
7. When European explorers visited Lake Superior in the 1600s they reported giant sturgeons (up to nine feet in length) and pike of greater than seven feet in length.
8. The largest tributary of Lake Superior, Ontario's Nipigon River, was in the 1800s the finest brook trout water in the world. It produced the world record brook trout of 14.5 pounds.
9. Some of the world's oldest rocks, about 2.7 billion years of age, can be found on the Ontario shore of Lake Superior.
10. The average annual water temperature of Lake Superior is 40º F. It only very rarely freezes over completely, and then usually just for hours. The last complete freezing of Lake Superior occurred in 1979.
11. Migrating birds of prey funnel down Lake Superior's north shore in great numbers each fall. On a single day at Duluth's Hawk Ridge as many as 100,000 birds of prey might pass by.
12. Lake Superior rests mostly on Precambrian rock at the southern edge of the Canadian shield, the largest exposure of such bedrock on the planet.
13. Sliver Islet, a Lake Superior island off Ontario's north shore, was the site for 15 years in the 1800s of the world's richest silver mine.

from:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/project ... erior.html

And it never gives up its dead when the gales of November comes early.

It never gives up it's dead period. (doesn't get warm enough)

Not that it's not interesting and all, but why are you telling us this?

I just found it interesting and I enjoy the area. I wouldn't mind having a Summer home on the Keeweenaw Peninsula. (I'm not crazy enough to ant to live up there in the winter)

Crackpot
I have a half acher dam you can put a shed up next to it. Not quite as big but I still love to go down the back and sit watching the ducks.

The surface area of Lake Superior (31,700 square miles or 82,170 square kilometers)

That's a bloody sea, not a lake!

What most people call lakes we call ponds.

Crackpot wrote:I just found it interesting and I enjoy the area. I wouldn't mind having a Summer home on the Keeweenaw Peninsula. (I'm not crazy enough to ant to live up there in the winter)

Yer insane, CP. I lived up there for a summer just near Ashland, and if it isn't Artic Blizzards in the winter, it's coast to coast electrical storms that stop traffic and down planes. About three years ago, Bayfield was destroyed by a summer storm of three tornadoes that came out of no where. There's a reason the towns are so small & deserted.

If you want to see The Pictured Rocks you might want to stop putting it off. Looks like they may disappear from erosion within our lifetimes.

We have the same problem with the Twelve Apostles down here.

They just don't make 'em like they used too!

and you can't get the parts either,

IIRC one of them fell already did they not?

Worse than that. There is only 8 left.

The best fall though was this one;

London Arch
London Arch is a natural arch in the Port Campbell National Park, Australia. The arch is one of the tourist attractions along the Great Ocean Road near Port Campbell in Victoria. This stack was formed by a gradual process of erosion, and until 1990 formed a complete double-span natural bridge.

The arch closest to the shoreline collapsed unexpectedly on 15 January 1990, leaving two tourists stranded on the outer part: they were rescued by helicopter. No one was injured in the event. Prior to the collapse, the formation was known as London Bridge because of its similarity to its namesake.

Gob wrote:The best fall though was this one;

London Arch
London Arch is a natural arch in the Port Campbell National Park, Australia. The arch is one of the tourist attractions along the Great Ocean Road near Port Campbell in Victoria. This stack was formed by a gradual process of erosion, and until 1990 formed a complete double-span natural bridge.

The arch closest to the shoreline collapsed unexpectedly on 15 January 1990, leaving two tourists stranded on the outer part: they were rescued by helicopter. No one was injured in the event. Prior to the collapse, the formation was known as London Bridge because of its similarity to its namesake.

This one in Santa Cruz, CA fell recently as well;



Not when it fell, but when I was a child my family was caught out there are at high tide!

10. The Lake Superior shoreline, if straightened out, could connect Duluth and the Bahama Islands.

Now that sounds like a great idea! Let's do it!