My mom was a German war bride who married my dad in Germany and then had to fly alone to the States because he had already been transferred to his new base in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After changing planes in New York to meet him in Minnesota, she looked out the window after flying for awhile and totally panicked because she thought she was on the wrong plane and was heading back over the Atlantic to Europe. They had to find a German speaker to explain that they were flying over the Great Lakes, not the ocean! I wonder how long it took to convince her.
Minnesota girl here.. Grew up ice fishing with my family and ice skating on ponds with my classmates. First, you had to shovel all the snow off the pond. By the time the pond was cleared, our feet and skates were frozen. One time I decided to use a microwave oven to bake a couple of potatoes. I would shove the baked potatoes into my skates to keep them warm while we shoveled. I transferred the potatoes to my shoes while we skated. Thought I was clever until my friends dog ran off with my shoes. Had to walk a good half mile home in my skates.
The Great Lakes are so large that they affect our weather. Lake effect snow can really bury areas downwind of the lakes. Storms can get bad enough on the lakes to cause shipwrecks. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a song by Gordon Lightfoot which commemorates the loss of 29 crewmen during a November gale. Lake Superior is no joke when the storms kick up. Winds can reach hurricane force and cold temperatures can cause ice to form .
I’m from Michigan, and people discovering how massive the lakes are always makes me giggle. They’re basically an ocean without the sharks. They’re so fun in the summer. There’s also dunes in certain areas, specifically sleeping bear dunes. You should check out some videos of the Great Lakes, specifically Lake Michigan in winter. The lakes do not freeze over but there are absolutely parts of the edges including lighthouses that freeze. It’s absolutely beautiful but also haunting
I live in Minnesota, which is near the center of the northern border of the U.S. Pretty much all of the lakes in MN (other than possibly Lake Superior) freeze over in the winter, unless the ice is artificially kept open. But after ice has been on the lakes for a few weeks and has grown sufficiently thick, it's common for people to drive out on them with their cars or trucks. They'll also set up ice houses on the lakes to fish from.
I live in Minnesota as well and some people can't wait and actually drive on the ice when it's only just become ok to walk on near the shore. Heck, i see people ice fishing while sitting on buckets and there's still open water 10 feet away. We've got some crazy people up here.
I live in Michigan, 3 blocks away from lake Michigan.. I just casually go and walk the beach or swim in the summer, not realizing how much more I should appreciate it.. It truly does look like an ocean! I walk with my friends or my pup almost daily, taking it for granted, I suppose... Even in our low to negative temps
My aunt has owned a double lot with a little 3 bedroom cottage on it in South Haven since the mid 70's. She's been the last hold out to selling so, her humble little cottage has set amongst much larger fancy homes for years now. She's got the beach parking lot on the west side of the house and the waterway between the docks and Lake Michigan running behind the house. Paid $20 thousand for it and has been offered as much as a million to sell. Such a wonderful place to go visit especially in summer. Their primary home is in Fort Wayne, but they go up to the lake house all throughout the yr. You're so fortunate to live near Lake Michigan. Such a beautiful coast.
I grew up on Lake Michigan, back in the seventies some of the smaller lakes of the big lake you could drive a small car on. One fool thought he could take a snowmobile from Muskegon to Milwaukee and was never seen again, oops big ships still travel the waters in the winter.
The top 25-50% of the volcano was blow off by the eruption, and then the rest of the volcano collapsed into the gigantic magma chamber that was emptied because of the eruption. The Mt Mazama eruption stands at a VEI7 on the explosive scale, up there with other famous eruptions like Tambora, which caused the year without a summer in 1815, and Santorini, which wiped out the Minoan civilization during the Bronze Age. Only super eruptions like Yellowstone and Toba are larger at the max of VEI8.
Being a resident of Chicago (right on the coast of Lake Michigan) there was a time when the coast guard had to rescue a tourist who accidentally walked out on a large frozen part of the lake because he thought it was just a giant field next to the city and not a massive freshwater lake that a decent portion had frozen. The entire lake doesn't freeze over, but that year a very large part of it did.
Each winter, the Great Lakes undergo a dramatic transformation as the surface of the water freezes over, forming a thick layer of ice that can cover as much as 90-95% of the surface area in some years
Last few years theyve barely froze at all, when they do its usually just by the coasts. Lake st. Clair regularly freezes over every year though, and when this happens us michiganders and canadians will both walk to the middle of the lake and enjoy a beer or 10 and fish. We also drive trucks and cars out there. You only need 8" of ice for a truck.
Lewis, did you notice the pile of snow just outside his window? The problem with falling through a sudden hole in a lake and not finding the hole isn't because it instantly froze over, but because, unlike ponds, rivers flow. Thus, as soon as you get under the ice, you start floating downstream, can't find the hole, and drown. It appears to me that the plane he flew over Crater Lake was computer generated, i.e., he flies via a computer game. There's one in Canada's NW Terr. named Great Slave Lake, which is the largest in N. America at 12,028 sq. mi./31, 328 sq. km., and remains frozen from November to mid June.
Back when I lived in Minnesota, I joined the polar Bear Club. They cut an 8'x16' hole in the ice and people would jump in one side and swim across and climb out the other where they had heated towels and a warm hut with hot chocolate and coffee waiting But here is the point of the story: The Ice from hole they cut was off to the side waiting to be put back when the event was done Two whole 8'x8'x8' ice cubes that had been pulled out by a crane which was behind them on the ice Yes, the ice was 8 FEET thick You are NOT falling through that The crane sure didn't, Nor any of the trucks or the Camper that people were using to warm up
Lake Tahoe's surface is at an elevation of 6,224 feet or 1,898 meters above sea level. The lake is snow-fed and supplies water for several communities, including Reno, Nevada. 1,644 feet deep and you can see the bottom that is 71 feet below the surface. When I was a kid, you could see the bottom 100 feet below the surface. Gorgeous lake, surrounded by mountains up to 10,000 feet above sea level. When I was a kid, we used to skate on the ponds in a couple of the city parks. Doesn't get that cold anymore and doesn't stay cold long enough to freeze the top 10-15 cm necessary to be safe to skate on.
There are tons of lakes and ponds that freeze over here in the winter. There's a pretty famous lake in NH called Lake Winnipesaukee that freezes every year where they hold ice fishing and hockey tournaments. The ice is typically even thick enough for vehicles to drive on. They've even made a runway on it and had planes land on it before.
Well wrap your head around this one.... the great lakes do in fact freeze. I have an uncle who used to snowmobile across them in the winter. He had a custom built Polaris that tacked out at 160mph, and he's whip across the lake. They don't freeze completely, in some spots there's openings, or water on top of the ice, but at 160+mph, you just hydroplane right over them.
Our lakes in Minnesota, USA, freeze over in the winter. The ice fisherman leave their huts on the lake during the winter. They drive their trucks or cars on the frozen lakes. Every spring, when the lakes start to thaw, someone always seems to be too late getting their vehicle off the ice and it breaks through the ice and sinks.
Alaskan here, we have more lakes than any other state, and they are frozen over more than half the year. here in Fairbanks we drive on the river in winter, its unofficially spring when the first truck goes through the ice, happens every year. tradition.
.......I live on a small island on the Canadian side of the border on the river that forms part of the border between the Canadian province of Ontario and the American state of Michigan. This river is called the St. Clair river. In order to keep the upper Great Lakes open for large scale commercial shipping, ice breakers are required to do the job and cut channels thru the ice for the large lake freighters to get thru. Until the 1970's, shipping was halted by X-mas time.... 🤠
Lake Superior's maximum length is 350 miles. It's maximum width is 160 miles. A drive around Lake Superior is about 1300 miles. That's slightly longer than the distance from Dallas, Texas to Los Angeles, California.
Like Laurence, I live within 5 miles of Lake Michigan. That lake is massive. When we have winters that are extremely cold for consecutive weeks, Lake Michigan does freeze over with what looks like big ice pancakes. When I'm at the shore of the lake, I can see the Chicago skyline to the West and the city looks about the size of an eraser on the end of a pencil. I live about 35 miles from downtown Chicago. Looking to the East from the shore of the lake, I cannot see Michigan. Looking North, there is also nothing but water as far as the eye can see. To me, it's actually a fresh water sea, which has ocean going barges and ships that enter the lake via the St. Lawrence Seaway.
I live 5 blocks south of lake erie, it is the shallowest of all the great lakes and has the highest average ice cover, do to the inlet from lake huron and and the outlet to lake ontario it is rare for a 100% ice cover. However in my life time there has been several time where you could walk from the USA to Canada across lake erie (around 36 miles). If you live and drive around a great lake (to be more specific South to East of one) you hope that it get cold fast, to ice over the lake to prevent lake effect snow. Lake effect snow can hit any great lake but lake erie is notorious for dropping huge snow storms. The areas most likely to get hit start at the Pennsylvania/Ohio State line and goes east/northeast all the way up into Buffalo and Syracuse New York. These storms can drop snow at a rate up to 6 inches an hour and 8 feet or more from one storm. People do ice skate on the lake here but the biggest thing done on the ice is ice fishing.
As of 2021, the surface area of the Great Salt Lake has shrunk to only 950 sq. mi. compared to the 3300 sq. mi area it had in the 1980s. That means Iliamna Lake in Alaska is currently the largest US lake that is not part of the Great Lakes. The difference in colour between the north and south portions of the lake is due to a railroad causeway, part of the Lucin Cutoff, that significantly impacts the flow of water between the two halves of the lake.
I'm from the U.P. of Michigan and yeah, those lakes freeze over and in fact Lake Superior is so cold, I've seen small chunks of ice floating in the water mid June.
Up in New England, we've got lakes that, when they freeze, teh ice is thick enough that we plow out runways on them and use them for airports. Not just landing on the ice, but an operational airport. (The Alton Bay Ice Airport on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. (FAA ID B18)
If you think ice skating is crazy, look into ice fishing. Some lakes freeze over enough that people actually drive trucks on them, set up a shed, drill a hole in the ice, and catch fish.
I used to cross country ski over a nearby lake back in the 70s. Climate change has had a huge impact on the amount of time (if any) the lake freezes over enough to safely cross now.
I live right in the middle of that mitten. We have a thing called "Lake Life" our water system is integral our our regional culture. Also all of the Great Lakes freeze over in the winter.
Check out an American sport called Ice Fishing. You go out on a frozen lake, cut a hole in the ice, then drop your line into the hole. They make special little enclosures that you can drag out on the lake and sit in while you fish.
Every few years someone tries to ice fish on Lake Superior, and has to get rescued by the Coast Guard, because the chunk of ice they're on breaks off, and floats out into open water. Usually with their vehicle on it. It's about a $30,000 fine to lose your car in Lake Superior.
I lived and grew up in western New York near Lake Erie. I’m not sure if Lake Erie freezes over or not. I haven’t really thought about it, though I probably learned about it in school but my memory is terrible now at age 70. Lake Erie does get lake effect snow though. Also, you should be able to find videos of people skating on frozen lakes on RU-vid.
Small historic fact for you. Not a lake but it is British body or water. That Thames used to freeze over in the 1800s and they held a frost fair on the ice.
7:33 if you look the state of Michigan and if you see the little blue dot in the middle of the state thats Houghton lake which is 48km or 30 miles in surface area
You can drain Lake Superior and have enough water to put all of the U.S.A. in 10 feet of water. Also Lake Michigan and Lake Huron were miscategorised as 2 separate lakes. It’s in fact one lake but everyone just calls it 2 different lakes. They are so large they have there own weather system. People surf on the lakes. There has also been hurricanes on the lakes. The most recent was in 1975 which took down the Edmund Fitzgerald a freighter. The 48th anniversary of it sinking was a couple days ago on November 10th. There’s a song called The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot that you should react to. Nobody really knows what exactly happened as there was no SOS and no survivors. One second it was on radar and the next it wasn’t. There is also an estimated 6,000-10,000 shipwrecks in the lakes. The lakes also have its own Bermuda triangle in Lake Michigan. And it’s arguably the most dangerous waters to ship in the world with how fast the weather and tides change. They are also known as the United States Inland Seas.
Listen to "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot. Its based on the actual maritime wreck of a ship hauling iron ore on one of the Great Lakes. The anniversary of that disaster just passed and the rings of the bell was played for the 29 lives lost, plus one new ring for the recent passing of Gordon Lightfoot
We ride snowmobiles across them and can do about 100 mph across it but the only Great Lake in Michigan that has not completely froze is Lake Michigan. The other have completely froze over
I live in Niagara Falls NY. I live about 10 minutes from the American/Canadian falls. I live in between all the great lakes. I grew up on the shore of Lake Ontario. I do a lot of fishing on all the lakes.
When my grandparents came to visit from the UK to Canada when I was young, we took them to Wasaga Beach. The would not accept that it was a lake (actually a bay off of a larger lake) because if you look north-west, you can't see land on the horizon. I don't think there is a lake in the UK where you can't see the other side.
You can't get very far in Mineesota without running into a lake. Our state vehicle license plate reads Land of 10,000 Lakes". Minnesota has 11,842 lakes of 10 acres or more. if you counted the more than 15,000 basins that were found in the 60's (3200 of which are dry), that would be almost 22,000. And that was over half a century ago. And this is Minnesota...they ALL freeze. There can be dozens, if not hundreds of fish houses on most of MN lakes for up to 4 months a year. Minnesota is the cold spot of the lower 48.
The great lakes are massive. Combined the 5 lakes equal 94,250 square miles, and contain 21% of the world's supply of fresh water. My home state has Lake Champlain and it is often called the sixth great lake it is 125 miles long and 12 miles at its widest point. Lake Champlain has 587 miles of shoreline.
1) The Great Lakes of Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Ontario are all so deep that their bottoms are below sea level. Why? In plate tectonics the North American continent once started to split apart, and these lakes were formed in the rift valley. 2) Great Salt Lake is two colors because there is a railroad causeway across the lake, and the water from the two sides can only mix at one point. Differing salinity and plankton results in the color differences.
The state of Minnesota is known as The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes because we stopped counting. .The biggest lake in Minnesota (not counting Superior) is Red Lake: 440 square miles next is Lake Milacs at 207 square miles.
In Alaska they have car races on frozen lakes! Of course the ice in lakes here are 3-4 feet thick! We also have 3 million lakes in the state of Alaska!
Two different colors happens in the Salt Lake when there are a lot of brine shrimp. there are times of year its just one color it all depends on when your looking at it.
I camp and waterski at Lake Monroe in Indiana (in the midwest...the state of the Indianapolis 500, basketball, and giant tendeloin sandwiches...). Lake Monroe is approx 16 square miles. I don't think it freezes over completely, but parts of it do. One year, I went waterskiing in late Feb/early March. There were many frozen areas and chunks of ice floating around. It was horrible and thrilling at the same time. Some others had wet suits, but I did not. Each of us did one teeth chattering lap around the lake. As far as Great Salt Lake, did you know that it's so dense with salt that you can't sink? It's really cool. I've also been in each of the Great Lakes, both in Canada and the US. You might as well be looking at the ocean. You have GOT to get over here and see this country! I have no pics of me ice skating, but I skated almost daily during freezes. We played 'slop' ice hockey. I once hit another player in the face with my stick and split his cheek wide open. It was an accident...sorta. 😊 Remember, I said 'slop' hockey. Just about anything goes! Another time, one of the guys fell through the ice. We all thought he was just resting and sitting in the snowbank. He wasn't. It was a very long wet walk home that day. What wonderful memories I have!
we brought our friend from Berlin to visit canada and lake Ontario and he thought is was a sea, we said it was the smallest inland sea and there were 5 of them, all freshwater, he thought we were lying!
As a native of Michigan, I live on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the Great Lakes. The first time I saw the ocean I wasn't impressed because it just looked like a lake to me.
In the northern U.S. and Canada, winters can be so cold that the ice gets thick enough to drive snowmobiles on and set up ice fishing huts. During World War 2, the Soviet Union ran a railroad over a frozen lake to get supplies to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) when it was cut off by the German army. The "records" of native Americans who witnessed the formation of Crater Lake 8000 years ago are probably oral history passed down all the generations, or maybe cave paintings. Most of the large lakes in the world are in the U.S., Canada, Russia, and possibly Scandinavia. They were formed during the end of the last Ice Age.
Fun fact. There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover the ENTIRE LANDMASS OF NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA COMBINED IN 1 FOOT OF WATER. That is just one of the Great Lakes. Imagine all of them
He really is a pilot and has his license to fly. There are parts of the great lakes that freeze several inches thick and they pur ice shanties (shacks) on them all winter to ice fish
Not sure if you're making a joke or not but to clarify, Lawrence was making a joke about using a flight simulator, but the way L3WG paused the video made it hard to hear the punchline. He isn't an actual pilot
