What is the surface area ranking of Lake Huron among the Great Lakes?
Lake Huron covers a surface area that makes it the second-largest of the Great Lakes. It stretches across the border between Ontario and Michigan.
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Lake Huron covers a surface area that makes it the second-largest of the Great Lakes. It stretches across the border between Ontario and Michigan.
Water flows through this basin faster than any other lake in the system with a retention time of only 22 years. This rapid turnover distinguishes its hydrological cycle from neighboring lakes.
Melting ice from retreating continental glaciers carved out the deep depression now filled by Lake Huron at the end of the last ice age. Ancient rivers flowed through what is now the lake bed before the glaciers arrived.
French explorers named the body of water after the Wyandot people they encountered living in the region around the mid-seventeenth century. Early documents often referred to it simply as Lac des Hurons on most maps created during that era.
The Great Lakes Storm sank ten ships and drove more than twenty others ashore over sixteen hours. Two hundred thirty-five seamen died during that catastrophic event when winds reached hurricane force.