Are the Great Lakes deep enough to swallow the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building? We decided to investigate. #greatlakes #lakemichigan #lakehuron #lakeerie #lakesuperior #lakeontario
I've just seen a Great Lake for the first time, Lake Erie. It's monumental, you cannot see the other side from the coast, huge lake, the largest I'd ever seen, to know it's also the shallowest and smallest Great Lake really puts into perspective the scales we're talking about
I was fishing for walleye on Lake Erie a few years before the pandemic I couldn’t believe the surface waves got so high on there. The captain told us to hang on, and we made it to shore safely, but man it was scary because the winds went right through Erie I forgot what it’s called what kind of phenomenon it’s called but it was weird.
@@TheWabbit I was fishing for walleye a couple years before the pandemic near Sandusky when the captain told us were headed back to shore because the waves he knew by instinct when she was gonna get mad, I give all the props to the captain when we got back to, you should’ve seen the size of those waves
@jamessveinsson6006 Buffalo gets the worst of it when the winds blow strong out of the west. The level of the lake can rise several feet in some cases. It is called a "seiche."
i do search and rescue i can't tell you the amount of people i have to rescue on these lakes. People ear lake and think they can take their small fishing boats on this. Yall respect the great lakes they are dangerous and makes big ass waves
As someone who lives next to Lake Erie, even though it’s the smallest and shallowest it still looks like and feels like the ocean minus the salt. It has beautiful beaches and even massive waves from time to time. It’s very beautiful and it’s like a mini freshwater ocean
Another fun fact is that the lakes get rough and they get rough fast. There are over 6,000 ship wrecks on the great lakes and over 30,000 people have lost their lives to them
@@fraskf6765 Thank you sir. They call me like this in school when they bully me because I bought flowers for my hot teacher because I'm in love with her.
I almost drowned in lake Erie on Saturday. No matter what you do, wear your life vest when you're on the water or have it within reach. Things can change in a split of a second
Fun fact: there's an old iron ore mine in Tower, MN that they've turned into a historic site that you can go tour. They'll take you to the deepest level mined, which is 2,341 feet down.
I remember my first time flying over the Great Lakes and I thought we were going over an ocean it lasted for so long and went as far as the eye could see in every direction.
I snorkel in Lake Superior. It's like being in an aquatic desert unseen by man. The water is caribbean clear, rock formations are amazing, the caves are unique to explore, and the northern pike are massive! Very thrilling buy also terrifying adrenaline rush.
i’m from Duluth, MN, a beautiful city on the shores of Lake Superior. everyone here recognizes and respects the power of the lake. it’s gorgeous and dangerous and massive
@@lander90 yeah, a bittersweet truth about buffalo new york. its a poor city. when people visit niagara falls, they are usually on the canadian side. leaves us free of tourists. but... it leaves us free of tourists. no money from them. and people who go through buffalo complain about it (they probably drive through the homeless streets). that worsens its reputation.
I live in the Thumb of Michigan on Lake Huron. We have the most beautiful western view sunsets and eastern view sunrises over the lake. Just spectacular.
I'm always a Lake Ontario kind of guy, Toronto you can't beat, though now I live near London which is between Huron and Erie. Lake Superior is way up north and makes me feel like the cities that are there are frozen wastelands and are quite dumpy, like Sault Ste Marie, ON where my family is from
@@1300BlueStarthere is a race everyone once in a while to swim from bayfield to Madeline island. But beyond that the only time to go swimming is on the beach or from a boat with a life jacket
In the grand scheme of things, the great lakes are not that deep. Yes, the Empire State building would still be barely visible if place at the bottom of Superior, but if it were placed at the bottom of Lake Hornindal (Norway), it would be fully submerged, by a significant margin too. This lake is 1650 feet deep.
@@Skarfar90why the great lakes are significant is not because of their depth, It's because of the sheer volume of fresh water stored inside them, If memory surface between all of the great lakes, that is about 20% of the world's surface freshwater all in one source effectively, I'm like Superior has I believe 10% or more of the world's surface freshwater. Also these are not really lakes, these are landlocked oceans that get some extremely aggressive weather when they feel like it, to the point where during the war of 1812 there would be Naval battles going on on these lakes that would abruptly end because the weather was picking up and nobody wanted to test how their ships would fare against these storms
An oddity is that Seneca Lake, one of the Finger Lakes in NY, has a maximum depth of 618 feet even though it is much smaller than Erie. The Navy tests sub equipment in Seneca because of the depth.
@@Epoch11look up the images of the Kamloops wreck. She went down in 1927 on Lake Superior. The engineer who’s known as “Ol’ Whitey” is still in the engine room and you can dive next to him. He’s decomposed to a point but because that water is so cold, he’ll never fully go away. Because of the water a diver will disperse, Ol’ Whitey will follow you if you dive next to him in the wreck.
Living on the northern part of Superior, I will always go swim on an inland lake. Superior is not swimming friendly. As a guy, you will suffer from a severe case of “rumple-foreskin” or “ASD”, better known as “Acute shrinky dink”….🤪
Yes but bear in mind that these are highly exaggerated. Like take the Lake Michigan diagram - it's 900 feet deep but something like 50 miles wide. That means its depth isn't even 1% its width. An accurate cross-section would just look like a straight line that gets a little thicker in the middle.
actually lake superior and michigan were created during a failed continental rifting event approximately a billion years ago. google "midcontinent rift system" or "keweenawan rift"
I had family visit from England a few years back. They landed in Toronto and when they saw lake Ontario they were shocked that it was just a lake. They said it looked like the ocean.
Lake superior could fill the grand canyons and then submerge the entire continuous 48 states in 2 in. of water, now imagine what would happen with all 5 of them
@@andrewhall7930Baikal has 1.89 times as much water, not “6-8”, and Baikal is 4 times deeper, not 3. Superior’s surface area is 2.6 times bigger than Baikal.
I've seen it, it looks like the other great lakes, I've lived near Lake Ontario my whole life and it's just alright. I've seen all of the lakes and they all look the same to me
Going over the Mackinac bridge is an awe inspiring sight and taking the ferry to Mackinac Island also provides much clarity on the size of the bodies of water surrounding the state I call home.
Other fun fact: All of us laymen call them The Great Lakes. In the scientific community, they are known as the North American Inland Sea. They're called that because they generate their own weather patterns, iirc.
@@skylersutton241 no, genious, its 8" × miles SQUARED. Try 81,666 feet. Why do you globe defenders have to go so far out of your way, to show how completely ignorant you are? If you know nothing about a subject, you shouldn't argue with someone who does. Anything else you want to know, Einstein?
You never seen a cross-section before it’s not confusing in the slightest It’s just to show you the depth of the lake not any other weird information that you’re trying to shove in there for absolutely no reason
From what I understand, those are not the real cross-sections of these lakes, or at least if they are, they're taken from a very odd angle, The deepest parts are not a significant percentage of their overall area, although that graphic of Lake Superior is pretty demonstrative of why it's called Lake Superior, It has the most fresh water of any one Source anywhere in the world by quite the wide margin
@@the_undead i looked it up and the baikal has a volume of 5,660 cu mi and lake tanganyika has 4,500 cu mi compared to the 2,900 cu mi of lake superior
@@baw5615 The thing is the great lakes are technically all connected and when you consider them all together then what I said is definitely still true and regardless it is a truly ridiculous amount of fresh water all in one location
Super scary part of them aswell is it is an IMMEDIATE drop off to the deep parts, almost all the edges of lake superior (That I personally have swam at) were very shallow, until they weren't. Be careful!
I love how Lake Superior looks like a hand pointing downward lol. Also, interesting to me that Lake Huron is the depth of Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico!
Fortunately, this is not what an actual cross section would look like, its just to help you visualize the depths a bit better. Lake Michigan is 923 feet deep, but its 118 miles wide, which is 623,040 feet. So, an actual cross section would look like a long, flat blue line with maybe the tiniest little bump in the middle. Same goes for all the Lakes, especially Erie.
I guarantee you, that The Great Lakes are called that for a reason. If you're paying that much attention to the "drop off", you might wanna rethink that. Those lakes aren't as skinny as football fields or towers.
Now this has to be the first size video I've seen without a wacky comparison. I'm a bit dissapointed that I don't know how many Cybertrucks stacked on top of each other I can fit into Lake Superior.
Yeah, we don't have anything like that in Oklahoma. It's definitely on my bucket list to fish the great lakes. My favorite species is smallmouth bass and from what I have seen, that's where the giants live
But it's thought that the ship broke in half because the bow hit the bottom of the lake. The lake may have been dangerous because of its size, but the ship may have been safer in deeper waters.
@@Eddiedubes yes. I didn’t have a diving suit on and I could only go out for about 20 minutes. My cousin did have one on though. It was still a lot of fun.
Not only will a glacier gouge out the softer materiel and transfer it south, the sheer weight of a glacier can depress the ground underneath it, squeezing the ground out in different directions. (Imagine placing a hot potato on a stick of butter).
Some time ago I moved from NYC to upstate NY. I have wondered about the Great Lakes! I know so little about them. It is great to know their depths! And your illustrative pictures are really so good. Thanks for this!
I worked a boat on the Mississippi River and was terrified when the sounder showed more than 300’. It didn’t help that all the doors in the boat opened out meaning if you were going down water pressure would hold the doors closed
My first ten years of life were in Lorain, Ohio. I've been on boats in Lake Erie, and the feeling you get when you look in all directions and cannot see land...just blue water and blue sky...I was frightened, and humbled. 🙁🌹⚓
People hear “great lakes” and their mind goes to backyard pond. The Great Lakes are freshwater inland seas. To think any less of them is foolish. Like any of the saltwater seas/oceans, the Great Lakes will swallow you alive without a care.
They'd be confined to one (maybe two) lakes. You'd have to travel through the Soo Locks to get from Superior to Huron/Michigan; through the St Mary's river and Lake St Clair to get from Huron to Erie (Lake St Clair has to be regularly dredge to keep it deep enough for shipping); travel from Erie to Ontario is restricted by Niagara Falls, the Niagara River, and the depth of the Welland Canal.
Absolutely. The US Navy has a submarine test program in Lake Pend Oreille in N Idaho and that's at "only" 1,150 ft deep. The subs are scaled down but they're still pretty sizeable.
Lake Superior Facts!!! Length- 350 miles Width- 150 miles Water surface area- 31,700 squared miles Max depth- 1,333ft Avg depth- 483ft Volume- 3 quadrillion gallons Avg water temp- 40°F Shoreline length- 2,726 miles
@@nat0radeIt’s better because its decimal based, it’s inherently better. 100cm=a meter, 1000m = a kilometer etc… Here’s a good example, what is 1.58 dollars? Obviously, a dollar and 58 cents. Easy. But go back to victorian england and you can’t possibly understand the currency system because it isn’t decimal based, and like the Imperial system you have no definite rule for what makes up a Pound. That’s why Imperial sucks and is not used in the US Military or most of the industrial sector here.
@@veganmochano its not, my guuy. He said Effel tower. The people of france and europe as a whole probably know how to pronounce it. But of course the vegan murican knows it better because you know everything better than anyone else, riight?
I was building an Eddie Bauer store in Michigan once and a resident told me there were times of the year that you could walk across Lake Michigan. Apparently they never tried to.
You can drive across some of the more eastern lakes. There's a few Mowhawk reservations that span the borders. they will drivee across during the deep winter.
For average ice cover for the Great Lakes is 53% and has decreased by 5% per decade since the 1970's. Lake cover can range from less than 20% to more than 90%. Crossing the Great Lakes will depend on ice cover on any given year. People and other animals have been known to cross the ice on Great Lakes on two or four legs by walking, skiing, skating, riding, or dog sleding. Using mechanical or motorized vehicles including snowmobiles, iceboats airboats, and others.
Although lake Erie might not have the deepest parts in the Great lakes, it still holds the record out of all the Great lakes for being the most consistently deep lake. If you look at the average depths of each lake lake Erie is the deepest.
My local body of fresh water is close to 600 feet deep. The fjord is the worlds third longest, and a depth of 4 274.9 feet. It's quite the humbling feeling
Some westerners experiencing drought had proposed piping water from the Great Lakes out west to fix it. Ignoring the technological infeasibility, they'd come up against not only US political and legal shit but also Canadian political and legal shit.
Then there’s Lake Baikal which is 5387ft deep, roughly four times as deep as Lake Superior, and containing more water than all the Great Lakes combined. Makes the Great Lakes look like kiddie pools 😂
Yes exactly because based on how flat the land is, it definitely does not seem like there's that much of a drop. The area around the lake is practically a mountain when compared to the bottom.
I love the way you guys do investigation for something seemingly boring and make it interesting and use different ways for us to understand how deep it is by using buildings to visualize it! Kudos well done!
I highly doubt that considering the oceans are where Hurricanes form lol. Yes the Great lakes can have some pretty bad storms and some of them can get worse than some ocean storms, but when worst comes to worst the ocean can create way worse storms, again Hurricanes form in the oceans. I don't see Hurricanes forming in the great lakes.
If it were my choice, I'd suggest comparing each Great Lake to a city on its shoreline. Like Duluth for Lake Superior, Chicago for Lake Michigan, Detroit for Lake Huron (you did that), Cleveland for Lake Erie, and Buffalo for Lake Ontario.
Tell everyone you don’t know sh!t about geography while telling everyone you don’t know sh!t about geography. Buffalo isn’t on Lake Ontario, it’s on Erie.
