How Big Are the Great Lakes Actually? | #shorts

[Lwize]

Hopefully the Great Lakes won't invade Great Britain.

[kenbrown]

Americ: so big we use other countries as units of measure.

[karenwhite]

One more fun fact: the Great Lakes hold 21% of the world's surface fresh water. 💙

[cpear]

Let me put it this way : I've stood on the banks of Lake Superior and watched a tanker sail over the horizon. It's basically an inland sea. It's the American Lake version of "This a knife" from Crocodile Dundee.

[duncanmcgee]

So big that during WWII Lake Michigan was used as training grounds for aircraft carrier crews and pilots. They could get live practice and a full sized ship in open water conditions with zero threat of submarines.

[shinysparkilylights]

they’re also terrifying af during the winter and storms

[St.Salem]

As a Minnesotan who lived in Massachusetts for five years, it is the impossible task convincing those people of just how large Lake superior is.

[matterhorn]

The Great Lakes are big enough that if you stand on their shores, in most places you can't see the other side. It's like standing by the ocean. They've been poetically called "Sweetwater Seas " and the comparison is apt.

[Tomyironmane]

Don't feel too bad. Someone in the US once said something to me about "Taking a day trip out across (great lake)." I asked him if he knew anything about boats. He says, "well, no." I said "Stay the hell off the great lakes" he asked why. I showed him a picture of the Edmund Fitzgerald. He said "That's a ship." I said "yeah, you see 'em all up and down the great lakes, and every now and then, one of them doesn't come back."

[denisep.]

"But, I'm an American citizen now, and so I sadly don't remember how the metric system works!" 🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂 This was the funniest line of the week! LOL

[Arbidarb]

Sounds like the question isn't "how big are the Great Lakes?" but rather " how small is Great Britain?"

[tadeluca]

Lake Erie; not quite as ominous as Lake Eerie.

[bombaysapphire]

I was fishing off the Milwaukee breakwater in the '70s, when a Japanese tourist asked me how far across it was. He was impressed when I told him 100 km across, and three times as long. His jaw dropped, though, when I told him it was all fresh water.

[Jameman]

Lake Superior has a surface area greater than the country of Austria(or the US State of South Carolina) and holds 10% of the world’s surface fresh water. It contains enough water to cover the entire landmass of the Americas in a foot(30cm) of water.

That’s just one of the Great Lakes

[kansashoneybadger]

Native American female here. Grew up near a Great Lake; love, love and more love it. Miss it, want to retire near one.

[Annie_Annie__]

I’m from the southern US on the Gulf Coast, and the first time I saw the Great Lakes, I remember not being able to comprehend that it was freshwater and not salt water.

My brain was interpreting it as a sea or a gulf, but it was freshwater with your typical freshwater fish.
But it had waves and tides!

Some of the locals described the bigger waves they could get and they sounded like the waves we got back home during hurricanes. During major hurricanes, at that.

And it’s _all freshwater_ ! On lakes!

[sinjun]

I’ve lived on Lake Michigan all my life. People who don’t live on the Great Lakes don’t understand how we can swim in them because they don’t warm up enough for them and they don’t understand how the underwater sandbars move every year and the undertow can be just as dangerous as swimming in the ocean. Now we have warnings about the safety of swimming on certain days but that wasn’t always true. We didn’t even always have lifeguards stationed at both the beaches. Never underestimate the power of the Lakes.

[Ikwigsjoyful]

I grew up in Northern Indiana, and we went to Lake Michigan regularly (especially in foul weather, so my dad could take pictures). When I was a teenager, we went on a trip to the East Coast so us kids could finally see the ocean . . . We weren't that impressed. (And yes, I know that even the Atlantic Ocean is much larger than the Great Lakes, but if you're a human just standing on the beach, they look pretty much the same.) I did dip my finger in the water just to taste it; from my perspective, the saltiness was the only real difference, heh!

[jenniferhanses]

I grew up in Michigan.

When I was talking to a friend who grew up in Connecticut, she talked about once seeing Lake Eerie, and being stunned that she couldn't see the other side of the lake. That seemed inconceivable to her because it's a lake, not a sea or an ocean. But she felt like it might as well have been an ocean because the other side wasn't visible. And Eerie is on the smaller side.

[sheilajstorms]

It’s a testament to the size of the Great Lakes that people in the comments, who live in cities sometimes hundreds of miles apart all owe their legendary bad weather, snowfall, wind, and ice storms to “Lake Effect” weather systems: Toronto, Watertown, Syracuse, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee…