Interesting Facts about Lake Superior!
- Lake Superior is, by surface area, the world’s largest freshwater lake. (Superior contains as much water as all the other Great Lakes combined, even throwing in TWO extra Lake Eries!)
- There is enough water in Lake Superior (3,000,000,000,000,000 – or 3 quadrillion gallons) to flood ALL OF North & South America to a depth of one foot. Lake Superior contains 10% of all the earth’s fresh surface water.
- The average underwater visibility of Lake Superior is 27 feet, making it easily the cleanest and clearest of the Great Lakes. Underwater visibility in places reaches 100 feet!
- It takes 400-500 years for a complete water change in Lake Superior and 191 years for a drop of water to remain in the lake. (You can see why zero point pollution is critical for the future of the Lake!)
- 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.
- The largest tributary of Lake Superior, Ontario is the Nipigon River. In the 1800s, it was the finest brook trout water in the world. It produced the world record brook trout of 14.5 pounds! Over 300 streams & rivers empty into Lake Superior.
- Fifty-eight orchid species are native to the Lake Superior basin. In North America, only Florida has more native orchid species.
- The Lake Superior watershed region ranges in size from 160 miles inland near Wabakimi Provincial Park to only 5 miles inland from Pictured Rocks National Seashore.
- The population of the Lake Superior Basin includes 425,548 U.S. citizens, 181,573 Canadians and hosts over 3.5 million tourists each year!
- If Lake Superior’s shoreline were unraveled into a highway, it would extend 1,826 miles(2,938 kilometers), the distance from Duluth to Miami. Lake Superior’s watershed covers 49,300 square miles (127,700 square kilometers).
