drst:
Do other USAmericans not know the names of the Great Lakes?? I grew up in the midwest so like. They’re important here but I never considered that other people might not give a fuck about these terrifying inland seas until I was reading a fic that said “the large Lake Michigan and another called Lake Erie” as if there are people who don’t know about Lake Michigan and Lake Erie.
Is that the case?? Are people outside of the midwest aware of these bodies of water outside of being just big lakes???
Okay so apparently people outside of the area near the lakes aren’t actually taught shit about them, which stresses me out so much actually??? These are NOT normal lakes, they are essentially inland freshwater seas with very strong currents (Superior, Huron, and Michigan are three of the ten largest lakes in the world), tp the point where they can have tsunamis, and are well known for people drowning and ships sinking in them. It’s estimated that anywhere beteen 6,000 and 30,000 ships have sunken in the Great Lakes.
We’re only about halfway through 2022 and there’s already been around 60 drownings this year alone. I really wonder how many of those deaths were tourists who weren’t aware of the very real dangers of these waters and treated them like normal lakes. If you visit them, treat them like you’d treat the ocean and be very careful.
Also, names from largest to smallest:
- Superior (second largest lake in the world 🎉)
- Huron (fourth largest in the world)
- Michigan (usually has the most deaths every year)
- Erie (shallowest of them all but is still ~210 ft deep in places)
- Ontario (smaller than Erie but almost 4x as deep in its deepest spots)
If you need a mnemonic the first letters of the lakes spell out HOMES; that’s how I memorized them for all my midwestern kid school tests.
The Great Lakes are not called that just because Americans are annoying braggarts about everything. They are all very large, to the point that each lake has its own weather patterns.
(via tinsnip)
