Lake Superior

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Tug

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Amazing Lake Superior Facts





· Lake Superior contains ten percent of all the fresh water on the planet Earth.

· It covers 82,000 square kilometers or 31,700 square miles.

· The average depth is 147 meters or 483 feet. · There have been about 350 shipwrecks recorded in Lake Superior .

· Lake Superior is, by surface area, the largest lake in the world.

· A Jesuit priest in 1668 named it Lac Tracy , but that name was never officially adopted.

· It contains as much water as all the other Great Lakes combined, plus three extra Lake Eries .

· There is a small outflow from the lake at St. Marys River (Sault Ste Marie) into Lake Huron . but it takes almost two centuries for the water to be completely replaced.

· There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America with water a foot deep.

· Lake Superior was formed during the last glacial retreat, making it one of the earth's youngest

major features at only about 10,000 years old.

· The deepest point in the lake is 405 meters or 1,333 feet.

· There are 78 different species of fish that call the big lake home.

· The maximum wave ever recorded on Lake Superior was 9.45 meters or 31 feet high.

· If you stretched the shoreline of Lake Superior out to a straight line, it would be long enough to reach from Duluth to the Bahamas .

· Over 300 streams and rivers empty into Lake Superior with the largest source being the Nipigon River .

· The average underwater visibility of Lake Superior is about 8 meters or 27 feet, making it the cleanest and

clearest of the Great Lakes . Underwater visibility in some spots reaches 30 meters.

· In the summer, the sun sets more than 35 minutes later on the western shore of Lake Superior

than at its southeastern edge.

· Some of the world's oldest rocks, formed about 2.7 billion years ago, can be found on the Ontario shore of Lake Superior .

· It very rarely freezes over completely, and then usually just for a few hours. Complete freezing

occurred in 1962, 1979, 2003 and 2009.




NOW YOU KNOW
 
"If you stretched the shoreline of Lake Superior out to a straight line, it would be long enough to reach from Duluth to the Bahamas ."

And since that fact was published, every sailor in Duluth has been trying to get to the Bahamas.

Boris
 
Tug":80zi17zo said:
· Lake Superior was formed during the last glacial retreat, making it one of the earth's youngest
major features at only about 10,000 years old.
Click to expand...

Contrast that to Lake Champlain, where Isle LaMotte is considered the oldest documented reef in the world, with 480 million year old fossils...that makes Lake Superior look like a new arrival...That area of Champlain was at one time a tropical coral reef, despite it now being situated near the Canadian border.

Very hard (for me) to understand how major lakes have migrated...http://www.eoearth.org/article/Plate_tectonics
 
journey on":2i33dtyp said:
"If you stretched the shoreline of Lake Superior out to a straight line, it would be long enough to reach from Duluth to the Bahamas ."

And since that fact was published, every sailor in Duluth has been trying to get to the Bahamas.

Boris
Click to expand...

This one is game to try! :) There might be a bit of portaging involved though :)
 
The world record brook trout was caught in the Nipigon river in 1915. Some of it's descendants may still be swimming in Lake Superior. I lived in the UP for five years back when pacific salmon were first established in the lake. It is a beautiful and fascinating lake.
 
Year round, the open surface waters of Lake Superior are colder than the coldest ideal drinking temperature for most beers(45F). You can make jello in Lake Surperior, even in the middle of the warmest summer days. Only fools and children, and moose swim in water you can make jello in.
 
Only fools and children, and moose swim in water you can make jello in.[/quote]

This fool likes to swim in it. Sometimes wet suits are used but in bays its very nice if the water has a chance warm up a little. It is a fine piece of water. I do have moose pics is my album swimming in the lake. Probably have pics of fools too :lol:

Chris
 
I often swim in Lake Superior, but usually not until August. Last summer the lake temperature rose higher than it has ever been, and we were swimming in the lake in July.
Kent
 
I visited one of my favorite "lost towns" on the Superior shore recently (Ontonagon, Michigan) OntanogonSuperior.jpg
if you look closely, you can make out the lighthouse on the left side of the picture. Once upon a time this was a ship building town (big ore ships) now it's mostly a dead town with crumbling houses and a few antique shops. Ontonagon does have a romantic feeling though, sort of like a Newfoundland outport village. There's a GREAT thrift shop here too. I bought a like new goose down jacket for $4.00. It's that kind of place :)

6 months from now this same scene will be Northern cruising paradise....well, 8 months from now :)
 
When I was 8 years old, we did a camping trip in which we drove all the way around Lake Superior. I remember fishing from a shoreline that looks an awful lot like the picture above. The other strong memory I have of that trip was the Apollo 11 moon landing took place while we were at a campground on the northern shore. We were the only ones in the campground with a TV - a small portable (maybe 12") black and white one. We put it up on the roof of the trailer and many other families came by to watch. It was about 10:00PM when Aldrin stepped foot onto the lunar surface but the assembled crowd stayed up to watch. I also remember a Quebecois family was present with kids the age of myself and my sister. They only spoke French and we only spoke English but we knew a few songs in common (Frère Jacques was the one I remember). All-in-all, it was a very memorable trip and one especially memorable evening.
 
MilesandMiles":3dxf31hy said:
I visited one of my favorite "lost towns" on the Superior shore recently (Ontonagon, Michigan)
Click to expand...

Wow, that name is familiar. 25 year ago I worked for a large forest products company and we had a brown paper mill there. I was only there once.

Drove across country in the middle of winter from Quinnesec, Michigan.

The things I remember are 1) getting passed by a snowmobile on the highway, 2) seeing ice domes formed on Lake Superior that looked like giant anthills, and 3) It was dinner time at the hotel when we checked in and a little girl who couldn't have been more than 8 or 9 checked us in and directed us down a hallway where all the rooms had keys in the doors and you just picked the one you wanted.

I think there was also a museum dedicated to mining iron ore and the ships that transported it.

Very nice people too...
 
Whenever I'm going to pass through Ontonogan, I always try to have breakfast at Syl's Restaurant. Still some of the best breakfast sausage I know of. And Ontonogan is still the gateway to the Porcupine Mountains area, one of my favorite places on the big Lake.
Kent
 
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