Lakes

The Great Lakes of North America

Much of the information in this section is revisited in the Other section of this page, or on other pages of this website, in 'question and answer' format.

The five Great Lakes of North America (often referred to simply as the Great Lakes) form an inter–connected sequence. Along with the rivers that connect them, they form a significant part of the border between Canada and the USA. The largest of them, Lake Superior, is the world's second largest lake, after the Caspian Sea; lakes Huron and Michigan are fourth and fifth respectively (third largest is Lake Victoria).

Lake Michigan does not form part of the border, and is entirely within the USA. It's the largest lake in the world that's entirely in one country. The state of Michigan is actually separated into two parts by the lakes Michigan and Huron (and the Straits of Mackinac, which separates the two lakes).

The basin that feeds the five Great Lakes of North America covers an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom and France combined. The total surface area of the five lakes is roughly the same as that of the UK. The five lakes contain about 5,439 cubic miles of water – about 21% of the world's surface fresh water by volume.

Many of the largest cities in the USA and Canada are on or near the shores of the Great Lakes. Green Bay, a city made famous by the Packers NFL franchise, is named after an inlet of Lake Michigan.

Water flows through the lakes from west to east. Fortunately for the quizzer, the order of size is effectively the same as the order in which the water flows, and because this is from west to east it's the same order that we see them in on a map.

It's now time for a mnemonic! The five lakes are, from west to east (with their respective surface areas in square miles):

Judy Parkinson (in i before e (except after c)) has two mnemonics for remembering this order:

I prefer this one however, which I found on a children's education wiki called WikiHow:

I said above that the order of size is "effectively" the same as the order of water flow. I can get away with this because hydrologically speaking, lakes Huron and Michigan are just one lake (separated, as we have seen, by the Straits of Mackinac), so water doesn't actually flow between them. In fact, as you can see from the first table above, Lake Huron is slightly larger than Lake Michigan.

You can also see that the first three lakes (Superior, Michigan and Huron) are all roughly the same size, as are the last two (Erie and Ontario); but each of the first three is significantly larger than either of the last two – Michigan is well over twice the size of Erie.

The lakes are fed by countless rivers; Lake Superior alone is said to be fed by over two hundred, none of which is predominant. But it's rare that a lake is drained by more than one river, and the Great Lakes are no exception. Each of the first four lakes is connected by that river to the next lake in the series; and Lake Ontario is connected to the sea. This gives rise to a sequence that can come up in quizzes. To explain this however, we need to introduce one more lake: Lake St. Clair, which sits between Huron and Erie. Its area is just 430 square miles – it's about one seventeenth the size of Lake Ontario.

The following table gives the names of the five rivers in question.

Superior to Huron		St. Mary's River
Huron to St. Clair		St. Clair River
St. Clair to Erie		Detroit River
Erie to Ontario		Niagara River
Ontario to the sea		St. Lawrence River

You may have noticed that Lake Michigan doesn't appear in this sequence. As explained above, it's really part of the same lake as Huron. If you're asked about the order in which water flows through the lakes, you can think of the word SHEO – which is almost like SHOE, except that the last two letters are the wrong way round!

The Niagara River is of course the one that flows over Niagara Falls, and two popular quiz questions ask which lake is above or below Niagara Falls. To help us remember the answers, we have the help of the English National Opera, or ENO (Erie – Niagara – Ontario).

Since 1829, lakes Erie and Ontario have also been connected by the Welland Canal (which bypasses Niagara Falls).

The English Lake District

The only Lake in the English Lake District (all the others are either Waters, Meres or Tarns)		Bassenthwaite Lake
Donald Campbell was killed (in 1967) on		Coniston Water
Keswick lies just off the northern shore of		Derwentwater
The most westerly of the major lakes in the English Lake District		Ennerdale Water
English lake (in the Lake District) that was controversially dammed in 1929 to provide water for Manchester; now provides approximately 25% of the water supply to North West England		Haweswater
Second largest lake in the English Lake District (after Windermere)		Ullswater
Pooley Bridge and Patterdale lie at either end of; Glenridding is also on its shore, near the southern end (about a mile from Patterdale)
England's deepest lake		Wast Water
England's largest lake (by surface area)		Windermere
The village of Ambleside lies at the northern end of

Other

Maximum depth of Loch Ness		229m (754 ft.)
Once the world's 4th largest lake, but now reduced to less than 10% of its former size (since the rivers that fed it were diverted in the 1960s – causing a major ecological disaster); lies between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan		Aral Sea
Lake Sevan – currently (2005) covers 3% of the country's surface area (940 km2), but prior to human intervention in the Soviet era it was 1,360 km2		Armenia
Crater lake in Djibouti: at 509 ft (155 m) below sea level, the lowest point on land in Africa and the second–lowest land depression on Earth after the Dead Sea; the world's largest salt reserve — surface area 21 sq miles (54 km2). (Lake Karum, in Ethiopia, is sometimes known by the same name.)		Lake Asal
Lake Nasser was formed by the		Aswan Dam
Lake Eyre (largest); Lake Amadeus, Lake Disappointment, Lake Torrens		Australia
The world's deepest lake; the largest in Asia (not counting the Caspian Sea), and the largest entirely within one country (although only marginally larger than the Great Bear Lake)		Baikal
English name for Llyn Tegid, Wales's largest natural lake		Bala Lake
Largest lake in Central Europe – often known as "the Hungarian sea"		Balaton
Lake at the junction of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (German name)		Bodensee
Great Slave Lake, Great Bear Lake; about two million lakes altogether (half of the world's total)		Canada
The world's largest enclosed inland body of water, by area, and thus generally regarded as the world's largest lake (see also Seas)		Caspian Sea
Shores in Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon, as well as the country with the same name		Lake Chad
The Italian resort of Bellagio lies at the tip of the peninsula that bifurcates		Lake Como
Lecco, Mendello del Lario, Varenna, Bellano, Colico, Domaso, Menaggio and Tremezzo are other towns on the shore of
English name for the Bodensee		Lake Constance
Largest lake in the Republic of Ireland		Lough Corrib
The world's lowest point on land (430 metres below sea level in 2017)		Dead Sea
Largest of three lakes on the River Shannon, and second largest in the Republic of Ireland		Lough Derg
Cleveland (Ohio) and Buffalo (New York) are both on the shores of		Lake Erie
Separated by Niagara Falls (above and below, respectively)		Erie, Ontario
Artificial lake near Pitlochry		Loch Faskally
Land of a Thousand Lakes (actually claims to have over 60,000)		Finland
Italy's largest lake, by area		Lake (Lago) Garda
Lac Leman is the French name for		Lake Geneva
Lausanne is on the shore of
Separated from the main body of Lake Huron by the islands of Manitoulin (the world's largest lake island) and Macinac		Georgian Bay
Lake in County Sligo, but partly in County Leitrim (Republic of Ireland), with around 20 islands, including Innisfree – mentioned in the poetry of W. B. Yeats		Lough Gill
Lake Volta is the largest lake in		Ghana
8th largest lake in the world, and the largest entirely in Canada		Great Bear Lake
Lake in Arizona that gives its name to the city where London Bridge is now		Lake Havasu
Second largest of the Great Lakes		Huron
The largest lake in Western Europe: formed by the blocking off of the Zuider Zee (in the Netherlands), named after the river that feeds it (the IJssel)		IJsselmeer
The world's largest man–made lake: on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe; created between 1958 and 1963 by damming the Zambezi River		Lake Kariba
Lake Naivasha is a freshwater lake with no visible inlet or outlet, in		Kenya
England's largest reservoir – in terms of volume of water (cf. Rutland Water)		Kielder Water
Europe's largest lake (the world's 14th largest) – Russia, near St. Petersburg; drained by the River Neva		Lake Ladoga
Loch Seaforth is a coastal feature of (Scottish island)		Lewis (and Harris)
Scottish freshwater loch: the largest lake in Great Britain (but not in the UK) by surface area (cf. Loch Ness, Lough Neagh)		Loch Lomond
Former salt lake, now dried up due to damming, in north–western China: often said (e.g. on Wikipedia) to be the westernmost extremity of the Great Wall of China		Lop Lake
Italy's longest lake (but see Lake Garda); mainly in Italy but partly in Switzerland		Lake Maggiore
Locarno (Switzerland), Arona, Verbania, Stresa and Luino (Italy) are on the shores of
The Borromean islands (Isola Bella, Isola Madre, Isola dei Piscatore) and the Brissago islands (San Pancrazio or Grande Isola, Isolino or Isola Piccola) are in
Third largest lake in Africa: formerly known as Lake Nyasa		Lake Malawi
Largest lake in South America (Venezuela) – connected to the Gulf of Venezuela (Caribbean Sea) by the Tablazo Strait		Maracaibo
Lake formed by the Hoover Dam – the USA's largest man–made lake, when full (which it hasn't been since 1983)		Lake Mead
The only Lake in Scotland (all the others are lochs, or lochans, etc.)		Lake of Mentieth
The only Great Lake that's entirely in the USA; name is Native American for 'Great Lake'		Michigan
Chicago and Milwaukee are on the shores of; Green Bay is an arm of
The deepest freshwater lake (loch) in Scotland, and in the British Isles (in the district of Lochaber, traditional county Invernesshire – to the west, and slightly north, of Fort William)		Loch Morar
Kenyan lake with the world's largest population of flamingos		Nakuru
Formed by the Aswan Dam		Lake Nasser
Wadi Halfa – a town in North Sudan – was partly submerged under
Largest inland lake in the UK (and in the British Isles)		Lough Neagh
Circular volcanic lake near Rome, famous for the ships built by Caligula and scuttled there after his downfall (salvaged in 1929–32, destroyed by fire in 1944)		Lake Nemi
Known as "the Mirror of Diana" – a nearby grove is sacred to her
Scottish freshwater loch with the greatest volume of water (cf. Loch Lomond)		Loch Ness
The largest lake entirely in Switzerland		Lake Neuchatel
Central America's largest lake – 98.7% of the size of Titicaca		Lake Nicaragua
Florida's largest lake (head of the Everglades, west of Palm Springs)		Okeechobee
Smallest of the five Great Lakes		Ontario
Toronto is on the shore of
The Norfolk Broads were formed by		Peat cutting
Countries with shores on Lake Titicaca		Peru, Bolivia
Man–made lake in Utah – Rainbow Bridge lies on its shore		Lake Powell
Lake in Staffordshire after which a famous English writer was named		Rudyard Lake
England's largest reservoir – in terms of surface area (cf. Kielder Water)		Rutland Water
Lake Tahoe is in the		Sierra Nevada
Lake Victoria: named by		Speke
The Great and Little Bitter Lakes are part of the		Suez Canal
Largest of the North American great lakes, and the world's largest freshwater lake (if Michigan and Huron are considered to be separate lakes)		Superior
Known to the Native Americans as Gichigami (big water) – rendered by Longfellow (in Hiawatha) as Gitchee Gumee
North America's largest Alpine lake: in the Sierra Nevada, on the border of California and Nevada, at an altitude of 6,225 ft (1,897 m); a major tourist attraction and skiing centre		Lake Tahoe
Ethiopia's largest lake, and the source of the Blue Nile		Lake Tana (Tsana)
The world's second deepest lake, and longest freshwater lake; second largest in Africa, by surface area		Lake Tanganyika
Largest natural lake in Wales		Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake)
Also known as the Sea of Galilee		Lake Tiberias
Second largest lake in South America, by surface area (after Maracaibo), and the largest by volume of water		Titicaca
(Reputedly) the highest navigable lake in the world
Lake in Kenya, formerly known as Lake Rudolf, where the British anthropologist Richard Leakey made many important discoveries of early human remains – including a skull believed to be approximately 1.9 million years old		Lake Turkana
Sweden's largest lake, and the biggest in Europe outside Russia		Vänern (VAY–nern) vanern
Africa's largest lake, and the world's second largest freshwater lake after Lake Superior: surface area approximately 68,800 square km (26,600 square miles); crossed by the equator		Victoria
The world's largest reservoir, or man–made lake (Ghana) – formed by the Akosombo Dam, and named after the river that was dammed to form it		Lake Volta

© Haydn Thompson 2017–22