How Great Are The Great Lakes – Dale’s Daily Data

One of them is right on our doorstep – Lake Erie one of the Great Lakes – the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world.  So large it holds one-fifth of the world’s fresh water and 95 percent of the fresh water in the United States.

Can you name the great lakes?  If you live in this corner of the world you probably can but teachers use HOMES as a way to remember the names of the Great Lakes.  HOMES – Huron, Ontario, Michigan,
Erie and Superior.

Superior is not only the largest of the Great Lakes – it’s the largest freshwater lake in the world.  It’s also
the coldest and the deepest with an average depth of 500 feet.  It contains so much water you could put all
four of the other lakes in it plus 3 additional Lake Erie’s.

Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes but interesting that more fish are caught in Lake Erie
than the other four lakes combined.

There’s a small lake that lies between Lake Huron and Lake Erie near Detroit.  It’s called Lake St.
Clair.  It’s not considered one of the Great Lakes because it averages only 10 feet deep and a maximum depth of 21 feet.

The oldest lighthouse on the U-S side of the Great Lakes is along the shores of Lake Ontario right at Fort Niagara.  It was built in 1818.  It remained active until it was decommissioned by the Coast Guard as a navigational aid in 1993.

If you were able to spread out the water from all of the Great Lakes over the entire continental United States….from Maine to Florida to California to Washington State…it would reach a depth of 9 and a half feet.