Some facts about myself

About Me

HELLO

By surface area, I am the world's largest freshwater lake.
Over 300 streams and rivers empty into me.
My surface area (31,700 square miles or 82,170 square kilometers) is greater than the areas of Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, combined. And about the same size of South Carolina.
I contain more water than all of my Great Lake siblings combined, you can even add a couple extra Lake Eries.
By volume, I am second only to Russia's Lake Baikal. But we don't talk about her, and we all know breadth is greater than depth.
I contain 10% of all the earth's fresh surface water.
I contain 3,000,000,000,000,000 (3 quadrillion) gallons of water, enough to flood all of North and South America in one foot of water.
My deepest point is 1,332 feet (406 meters) below the surface, about 40 miles north of Munising, Michigan.
My average elevation is about 602 feet above sea level.
My watershed ranges in size from 160 miles inland near Wabakimi Provincial Park to only 5 miles inland from Pictured Rocks National Seashore.
My shoreline, if straightened out, would connect Duluth to the Bahama Islands.
My average underwater visibility is 27 feet, easily making me the cleanest and clearest Great Lake. Underwater visibility in places reaches 100 feet. I am described as "the most oligotrophic lake in the world."
I am about 350 miles (563 km) in length and 160 miles (257 km) in width.
In summer, the sun sets over 35 minutes later on my western shore than eastern shore.
Isle Royale is my largest island at 206 miles wide, in total I have over 400 islands.
My waves have been recorded up to 50 feet high.
Traveling by car will take you 1,300 miles around my circumference, which you can do via my official Lake Superior Circle Tour.
My largest underwater formation is the Superior Shoal, which rises from a depth of over 1,000 feet to within 20 feet of the water surface over a distance of just three miles.
Sudden changes in winds or barometric pressure can produce seiches, a phenomena which results in water levels rising or falling as much as six feet along my coast in a short period of time.
My water is retained, on average, for 191 years.
Lake Superior is one of the earth's youngest major features, at only about 10,000 years of age--dating to the last glacial retreat. By comparison, the earth's second largest lake (by surface area, and largest by volume), Lake Baikal in Russia, is 25 million years old.
Fifty-eight orchid species are native to the Lake Superior basin. In North America, only Florida has more native orchid species.
Lake Superior produces the greatest lake effect snows on earth. (Significant lake effect snows are a rare phenomenon, occurring--besides on the Great Lakes--only on the east shore of Hudson Bay and the west coasts of two Japanese islands.) Lake effect snows extend 20 to 30 miles inland, primarily on the Ontario shore southeast of Marathon, and from Sault Ste. Marie to the Wisconsin-Michigan border. Average annual snowfall in Michigan's Keweenaw exceeds 200 inches in places.
I have only been at my modern elevation for only about 2,000 years, when elevations of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron dropped, creating a rapids at Sault Ste. Marie.
Lake Superior has its origins in the North American Mid-Continent Rift of 1.1 to 1.2 billion years ago, which produced a huge plume of hot mantle where the present lake sits. The crust tore apart, leaving an arc-shaped scar stretching form Kansas through Minnesota, then down to Michigan.
Within its borders, Lake Superior has both the thickest, and nearly the thinnest, crust found anywhere in North America.
When European explorers visited Lake Superior in the 1600s they reported giant sturgeons (up to nine feet in length) and pike of greater than seven feet in length.
My largest tributary, Ontario's Nipigon River, was in the 1800s the finest brook trout water in the world, producing the world record brook trout of 14.5 pounds.
Some of the world's oldest rocks, about 2.7 billion years of age, can be found on the Ontario shore of Lake Superior.
My average annual water temperature is 40º F. Very rarely do I freeze over completely, and then usually just for hours. My last complete freeze occurred in 1979, though I came awfully close 2014.
Migrating birds of prey funnel down Lake Superior's north shore in great numbers each fall. On a single day at Duluth's Hawk Ridge as many as 100,000 birds of prey might pass by.
Lake Superior rests mostly on Precambrian rock at the southern edge of the Canadian shield, the largest exposure of such bedrock on the planet.
Lake Superior contains nearly 70 million diporeia (shrimplike creatures) with a total biomass greater than that of the human population in the entire Lake Superior basin.
Feeling fishy? I have 88 species of fish.
My surface area is equivalent in size to Czech Republic and Austria. I am bigger than Ireland, Croatia, Switzerland, and others.
As recently as 10,000 years ago I was covered in glacier, being formed after earth's most recent glacial period, the Wisconsin Glacial Episode.
I am home to Isle Royale, which is home to Siskiwit Lake, which contains Ryan Island, which contains Moose Flats pond, which contains Moose Boulder. Hence becoming the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake in the world, or something like that.