Posted by Robert Dilley on May 13, 2004 at 18:44:13 from 65.39.13.79 user rdilley.
In Reply to: Re: New Frequently Asked Questions pages posted by alan truelove on May 13, 2004 at 15:42:44:
As a geographer, you can't expect me not to point out that if you go to a nearby Canadian beach from Buffalo you are swimming in Lake Erie, not Lake Superior. Erie is the shallowest (and most polluted, though it has improved of late) of the Great Lakes (if you ignore the efforts of some New England legislators to get Lake Champlain declared a Great Lake).
Superior is another matter altogether -- max depth 405 m (compared with Erie's 64) and 82,100 km2 (Erie 25,700). You can swim in Superior -- if you find a shallow, sheltered bay that has had a lot of sun to warm the water. Outside sheltered waters the lake is cold and dangerous and a great many large ships have sunk in storms (some of you may know Gordon Lightfoot's song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald about the sinking of what was then (1975) the largest ship on the Great Lakes).
Although the water freezes deep for tens of miles offshore (and was still frozen in front of our house in late April) it virtually never freezes all over and then only for a day or two: there is just too much water. (Though, as a final piece of geographical trivia, Superior does not contain as much water as Lake Baikal in Russia, which is much deeper on average).