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Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

atlasobscura.com

61–70 of 222 posts

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have a one way flow though

Neither do the Straits of Mackinac

A lot of people argue that the Straits of Mackinac is just a very narrow section of a single large lake - in other words that Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are a single lake, not two lakes.

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#62
post #32

Seas or not, I love the lakes and the land around them, in the 20+ years since I moved myself here they've taken over my heart. I'm from the aspen parkland of central Alberta; thin trees, dry air, small muddy leach-infested kettle lakes, big skies, poplar and birch land. When I was 8 we did a trip across Canada, and I remember us camping by the shores of Superior when a massive thunderstorm came rolling in, and it le…

I guess. I don’t miss them and always thought they were cold and smelly and didn’t make for great beaches. The weather around them is awful as well with long, bitter cold winters and summer days that are often extremely humid. You can’t really eat the fish out them either due to high levels of mercury. Additionally the land around the lakes is nice but not spectacular. At least not for North America. If I were to pla…

Chicago local here, and Lake Michigan kitesurfer and surfer. The best swells hit when in the fall and spring, so you better have a good wetsuit. That said, since getting into the sports it makes me love the lake even more. You quickly get over the temp, and just get to enjoying the water. Its also nice to not have to worry about sharks! Some of the best surfing in the area is up in Sheboygan, WI, the Malibu of the Midwest.

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#64

Seas or not, I love the lakes and the land around them, in the 20+ years since I moved myself here they've taken over my heart. I'm from the aspen parkland of central Alberta; thin trees, dry air, small muddy leach-infested kettle lakes, big skies, poplar and birch land. When I was 8 we did a trip across Canada, and I remember us camping by the shores of Superior when a massive thunderstorm came rolling in, and it le…

I grew up in south west Michigan and absolutely took them for granted. After almost 5 years in Austin we decided to come back to Michigan with the birth of our first child. I missed the lakes terribly, just totally took for granted that not everywhere has fresh water surrounding them on all sides. In this climate change age, being close to so much fresh water really helps calm my nerves knowing that I am in a spot th…

OT: So many folks find themselves moving “home” when kids arrive, for a variety of reasons. As someone considering doing the same I’d be curious to hear yours.

I spent last summer in the Midwest (on a lake) and I found it first comforting (no fire season!) and then distressing as the rains failed to come and smoke eventually arrived instead. One of the driest summers I can recall. P

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#65
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politically brighter Congressmen might see such a repeal not as a one-off special event, but instead as a precedent for further "inter-state resource raids". Some of which raids could target their own states. So - support for that repeal might prove scarcer than you'd think, from just looking at a map of drought-plagued areas of the U.S. Also - burning needs for water tend to be sudden & immediate things. Vs. designi…

The great lakes water is simply channelled to the Atlantic. It would take an engineering project to divert 10-20% to the west. No hard tasks, just the creation of a sloped canal. In desert areas you could cover it with solar cells - also land based ones, to provide the pump energy over hills/mountains etc. Tunnels can be drilled where mounts are high. This water added to the west would revive it from the death spiral…

When you say "No hard tasks" I assume you mean that the engineering is relatively straightforward.

The surface of Lake Michigan is around 650 feet above sea level. Go 50 miles due west and you are at 800-900 feet elevation. The average elevation in Kansas is around 2000 feet above sea level! If you go southwest, it is naturally downhill - the existing rivers prove that - but you run into the problem that the water is heading south more than it is heading west.

It's a serious uphill climb to get that water out west. You don't need a sloped canal, you need a sloped tunnel thousands of feet below the surface!

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By act of Congress, not Constitutional amendment. It could be repealed in a matter of weeks if Congress saw fit.

Politically brighter Congressmen might see such a repeal not as a one-off special event, but instead as a precedent for further "inter-state resource raids". Some of which raids could target their own states. So - support for that repeal might prove scarcer than you'd think, from just looking at a map of drought-plagued areas of the U.S. Also - burning needs for water tend to be sudden & immediate things. Vs. designi…

> Politically brighter Congressmen might see such a repeal not as a one-off special event, but instead as a precedent for further "inter-state resource raids".

You could say the same about Texas's abortion private bounty hunting bill. Doesn't seem to have stopped them.

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#67

Seas or not, I love the lakes and the land around them, in the 20+ years since I moved myself here they've taken over my heart. I'm from the aspen parkland of central Alberta; thin trees, dry air, small muddy leach-infested kettle lakes, big skies, poplar and birch land. When I was 8 we did a trip across Canada, and I remember us camping by the shores of Superior when a massive thunderstorm came rolling in, and it le…

I grew up in south west Michigan and absolutely took them for granted. After almost 5 years in Austin we decided to come back to Michigan with the birth of our first child. I missed the lakes terribly, just totally took for granted that not everywhere has fresh water surrounding them on all sides. In this climate change age, being close to so much fresh water really helps calm my nerves knowing that I am in a spot th…

I wouldn't bet too much on that.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/the-great...

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#68
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess. I don’t miss them and always thought they were cold and smelly and didn’t make for great beaches. The weather around them is awful as well with long, bitter cold winters and summer days that are often extremely humid. You can’t really eat the fish out them either due to high levels of mercury. Additionally the land around the lakes is nice but not spectacular. At least not for North America. If I were to pla…

I have been to a Great Lake one time (Lake Erie) and it made me sad. The shore had a bunch of dead fish all over it and it smelled very bad. The person i was with, an Erie, PA native, said that the water was pretty much "dead". Very antidotal but if left an impression on me.

I grew up in Erie—the invasive Zebra mussels have cleaned up Lake Erie a lot in the past couple decades. My understanding is that fish populations are doing much better now because of it.

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#69

Seas or not, I love the lakes and the land around them, in the 20+ years since I moved myself here they've taken over my heart. I'm from the aspen parkland of central Alberta; thin trees, dry air, small muddy leach-infested kettle lakes, big skies, poplar and birch land. When I was 8 we did a trip across Canada, and I remember us camping by the shores of Superior when a massive thunderstorm came rolling in, and it le…

I know exactly how you feel. I lived two blocks from Lake Michigan in Chicago for about 5 years. Most mornings I would ride along the lake on the way to work, even though it was the wrong way, just to see the lake, feel the air, and spend a little time next to it.

Re: Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

#70
post #15

"They hold more than a fifth of Earth’s unfrozen fresh water" I read quite a few stories about the horrible drought in the west, and here I am sitting on a good part of all the usable water in the entire world. I can't help but think at some point a bunch of people are going to come for that water, in one way or another. Either by moving here, or trying to move it there. Some ideas have been floating around about tha…

Would the energy used pumping the water from the quite low lakes, over the Rocky Mountains and Sierras to the west coast be less than a desalination plant? Another option is just moving the water usage closer to the usable water.

Most likely only a little bit would actually be piped. You’d just stop water from entering one watershed and send it into another and let gravity do its work. You would lose more to evaporation; but that happens to water in pipes too if they’re above ground.

Would love to see the numbers.

It’s fun looking at rivers from the Rocky Mountains in California that don’t make it to the ocean anymore.

I recently proposed a transatlantic natural gas pipeline and people thought I was insane, but it would only be ~5x longer than the longest existing underwater natgas pipeline, which doesn’t sound impossibly viable.

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