Brit Reacts to The Extreme Geography of the Great Lakes

追加: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]the extreme geography of the Great Lakes in America. Very interested to see what we got in this video. Before we do get into it, appreciate if you guys can subscribe button and yeah, let's see what we got. What if I told you there's a single lake system holding enough fresh water to submerge the entire contiguous United States under 10 ft of water or that despite being hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, it hides a massive underwater graveyard?

[00:00:24]>> No, that's actually crazy, right? Like these lakes combined cuz America's massive. Absolutely massive. The whole entire United States of America would be under 10 ft of water.

[00:00:38]>> Of over 6,000 shipwrecks.

[00:00:41]>> Welcome to the North American Great Lakes.

[00:00:43]>> Wait, I wonder how many feet of water the UK would be under.

[00:00:48]>> Would it be like 100 times or more? A region often thought of >> 100 ft >> as just a cluster of big lakes, but one that is actually a massive slow motion waterfall with an economy large enough to rival the world's biggest countries.

[00:01:03]>> Here are 15 incredible geography facts you never knew about the Great Lakes region.

[00:01:08]>> Boom. Let's get it. The fifth of the world's fresh water. That's mad. When we look at a map, it's easy to underestimate the sheer volume of the Great Lakes. Together, they hold an incomprehensible six quadrillion gallons of water. To put that in perspective, >> I don't even know what number that is.

[00:01:25]>> This represents roughly 21% of the entire planet's surface fresh water.

[00:01:30]What? And a staggering 84% of North America's supply. If you were to somehow pull the plug and pour all of the water over the contiguous United States, the entire country from coast to coast would be submerged nearly 10 ft underwater.

[00:01:45]>> That's crazy. Massive volume makes the region one of the most strategically and ecologically vital areas on Earth. I've seen the Great Lake, well, not in person, but I've seen it on like a video before of like Chicago, and it just looks like an ocean, >> serving as a global freshwater bank that dwarfs almost every other lake system, trailing only behind Russia's ancient lake by call and the planet's polar ice caps in terms of total freshwater volume.

[00:02:11]>> Right.

[00:02:13]The behemoth that is Lake Superior.

[00:02:18]>> Lake Superior more than lives up to its name. It's an absolute giant.

[00:02:23]>> By surface area, it's the largest freshwater lake on the entire planet, covering over 31,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of Austria.

[00:02:33]>> That is crazy.

[00:02:36]That is crazy. The whole like the the area of the lake is the size of Austria.

[00:02:44]A whole country, bro. But its surface only tells half the story. Because it reaches depths of over 1,300 ft, Superior holds over half of all the water in the entire Great Lakes system.

[00:02:55]>> Wait, I'm trying to just fathom how big that is. That's like an ocean. Well, it's not an ocean, but the fact that the whole entire water and it goes that deep and is the whole size of a country is insane. Combined, the volume is so immense that you could pour all the water from lakes Michigan, Hiron, Erie, and Ontario into Superior's basin, throwing the volume of three additional Lake Eeries just for good measure, and it still wouldn't overflow.

[00:03:24]>> It's deep, notoriously frigid waters create a formidable and rugged aquatic environment that behaves much more like a turbulent inland sea than a traditional lake.

[00:03:33]>> Right.

[00:03:35]Dramatic microclimates.

[00:03:38]The Great Lakes are so vast that they act as localized weather engines, significantly altering the climate of the surrounding land. Because water retains heat far longer than soil or rock, the lakes stay relatively warm deep into the autumn and early winter.

[00:03:52]When freezing, dry arctic air sweeps down from Canada and passes over these massive bodies of relatively warm water.

[00:03:58]It rapidly evaporates moisture into the atmosphere. This moisture quickly condenses and is dumped onto the downwind shores, the less sides as intense localized precipitation known as lake effect snow. This phenomenon creates specific snow belts for cities like Buffalo, New York and Grand Rapids, Michigan can suddenly receive multiple feet of >> You know what? It's actually interesting how weather works. Like mother nature, like even though mother nature, especially in America, can be devastating, like it is beautiful the way it just works. snow in narrow bands.

[00:04:32]While towns just a few miles away might see nothing but clear, cold skies, >> right?

[00:04:38]Cuz there's a slow motion waterfall.

[00:04:40]It's helpful to think of the entire Great Lakes system not as five stagnant pools, but as one massive slowmoving river flowing west to east toward the Atlantic Ocean.

[00:04:50]>> Oh, wait. Is the Great Lakes all connected? Like on the map, it don't look fully connected though. Like like this part right here, is there some sort of connection there? It's helpful to think of the entire Great Lakes system not as five stagnant pools, but as one massive, slowmoving river flowing west to east toward the Atlantic Ocean.

[00:05:09]>> The journey begins in Lake Superior, which sits at an elevation of about 600 ft above sea level.

[00:05:15]>> From there, the water flows steadily downhill through the St. Mary's River into Hiron and Michigan, then down through the St. Clair River system into Lake Erie. The most dramatic step in this continental staircase occurs between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

[00:05:29]Here, the water plunges over the Niagara escarment, dropping 326 ft in elevation.

[00:05:35]>> Wait, so Niagara Falls is literally connected to the Great Lakes. So, the Niagara Falls water is the Great Lakes water.

[00:05:43]>> A sudden violent bottleneck is what creates the world famous Niagara Falls before the water finally continues its descent through the St. Lawrence River to the sea. Okay.

[00:05:55]Geological thief.

[00:06:01]>> I'm struggling, mate. Geological infants, right?

[00:06:06]>> While the lakes feel permanent and ancient.

[00:06:08]>> Oh, that is beautiful.

[00:06:10]>> They are incredibly young in the grand timeline of geologic history. The Great Lakes as we know them today took their current shape only about 10,000 years ago >> only >> at the end of the last ice age. Prior to this, the region was flattened beneath the Laurentide ice sheet, a massive glacier up to 2 mi thick. As the climate warmed, this gargantuan ice sheet retreated northward, acting like a continental bulldozer. The moving ice gouged deep, massive basins into the Earth's crust, exploding softer rock layers.

[00:06:41]>> Is that how it formed?

[00:06:43]>> While leaving harder rock behind. When the ice finally melted, unimaginable volumes of glacial meltwater filled those newly carved basins, creating the magnificent fresh >> Wait, the glacia was so Wait, how big was the glacia, bro?

[00:06:58]>> Water seas that now dominate the North American.

[00:07:00]>> Like, it's actually mental to think about how big something like that would have been to like do that >> map. Let's take a quick break. There's a reason rivers flow backward and borders don't move for fun. Just like there's a reason why Morgan and Morgan is America's >> sponsor massive underwater graveyard. Oh, okay.

[00:07:19]This is the shipwrecks, right?

[00:07:20]>> Despite being technically classified as lakes, these bodies of water are incredibly dangerous to navigate. Size allow storms to build rapidly while their relatively shallow depths compared to oceans cause waves to become incredibly steep and close together, battering ships relentlessly. As a result, the Great Lakes are a massive underwater graveyard. Wow.

[00:07:42]>> Historians estimate that there are between 6,000 and 10,000 shipwrecks scattered across the lake beds, claiming the lives of an estimated 30,000 sailors over the centuries. the most.

[00:07:52]>> See, you won't like I don't know too much of the differences between the different bodies of water yet, but like I would think that it's a lot easier to sail over a lake, but then again, these are the Great Lakes, right, than like the ocean and stuff like that. Of these tragedies occurred during the gales of November, a fierce weather pattern that famously sank the massive freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior in 1975. Reminding the modern world that even the largest steel ships are at the mercy of the inland seas.

[00:08:24]>> Jeez. Names rooted in the indigenous history.

[00:08:30]>> The cultural geography of the region is deeply woven into the names of the lakes themselves. four of which derive directly from the languages of the indigenous peoples who have lived along their shores for millennia. Right.

[00:08:42]Michigan is an adaptation of the Ojiway word Mishami which translates simply to >> I've heard of Mishagami before. I think I've seen it like heard of it in like TV shows.

[00:08:51]>> Great water. Ontario comes from the Wando word believed to mean lake of shining waters. Eerie was named by early French explorers after the Aries tribe an ircoin group who lived along its southern shores. Hiron is the exception being a name given by the French to the local Wando people. Acknowledging these names is a constant reminder of the complex rich first nations and native American history that predates European arrival by thousands of years.

[00:09:18]>> Right.

[00:09:19]The canal that built an empire in the early 19th century. The formidable Appalachin Mountains acted as a massive geographic wall blocking the movement of goods and people between the Atlantic coast and the resourcerich interior of North America. I >> I have seen a video actually into this how these mountains were like a barrier for so many years.

[00:09:40]>> This all changed in 1825 with the completion of the Eerie Canal. This monumental engineering feat artificially connected the Hudson River Valley in New York directly to Lake Erie. Almost overnight, transport costs for bulk goods plummeted by 95%.

[00:09:56]>> Funnled the immense agricultural wealth of the Midwest straight into New York, bypassing the alternative route down the Mississippi River.

[00:10:03]>> This geographic pivot fueled a massive population boom in the Great Lakes basin and cemented New York City status as the financial and commercial capital of the United States. Now look here today reversing a river to save a city.

[00:10:18]>> As Chicago rapidly industrialized in the late >> How do you reverse a river?

[00:10:22]>> 19th century it faced a massive geographic and public health crisis. The city's sewage was flowing directly into the Chicago River which emptied into Lake Michigan. The exact same place the city drew ITS DRINKING WATER. THIS >> A COME ON >> LOOP CAUSED DEVASTATING >> come on that's disgusting >> outbreaks of waterbborne diseases like chalera and typhoid to save his population engineers executed one of the most audacious infrastructure projects in history they reversed the flow of the Chicago River >> yo hey I'm not a riverologist right but how on earth do you reverse a river >> completed in 1900 a massive canal system was cut through the subcontinental divide by artificially lowering the river's channel, the water was forced to flow backward, sending Chicago's waste water south towards the Mississippi.

[00:11:12]>> Oh, so you manually just like put the river on a steep but like do you just like dig out more of the B? How do you how do you I thought when like water flows one way it's because of like the moon and that, right?

[00:11:26]I know the mood is because of waves, but like surely like I've seen like videos of like in the ocean how like two waters don't meet cuz like I I don't know, bro.

[00:11:36]I don't know. But I thought if like waters go in one way, you can't really change it, right? But I suppose like if you make it then, right, it would just slide on that way. But sure >> be river basin permanently altering the hydraology of the region to protect its freshwater source.

[00:11:51]>> Right.

[00:11:52]Crucial naval theater. It's strange to think of naval warfare taking place in the middle of a continent, but during the War of 1812, the Great Lakes were a fiercely contested war zone. Really, >> both the United States and the British Empire recognized that controlling these waters meant controlling the vital supply lines to the North American interior. This led to intense arm races and ship building campaigns on the shores of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.

[00:12:17]Wow. The conflict peaked at the battle of Lake Erie in 1813 where American forces under Oliver Hazard Perry decisively defeated the British fleet.

[00:12:26]The stalemate of the broader war.

[00:12:27]>> You defeated us >> or ultimately led to the Rush Bagot treaty of 1817 which strictly limited military vessels on the lakes and established the foundation for the famously demilitarized US Canada border.

[00:12:43]Tied in a megalopouloolis. Today, the Great Lakes region is far more than a geographic feature. It's an economic beauty.

[00:12:50]>> The area forms a massive crossber megalopouloolis stretching from Chicago and Milwaukee in the west through Detroit and Cleveland all the way to Toronto and Montreal in the east.

[00:12:59]Roughly 60 million people, almost a fifth of the US population and a quarter of Canada's call this basin home.

[00:13:06]because of it population historic manufacturing infidas call this >> 60 million people around this area >> million people almost a fifth of the US population in a quarter of Canada's call this basin home because of its dense population historic manufacturing infrastructure and vast agricultural output the region is a global powerhouse of course if the great lakes region were an independent country its highly integrated bational economy would generate a GDP of over6 trillion US.

[00:13:38]>> That's more than the UK, isn't it? I swear the UK is like three trillion, >> making it the third or fourth largest economy in the world.

[00:13:45]>> That wait, and that's just taking out the small part of America around the Great Lakes, >> heavily driving the North American supply chain.

[00:13:56]>> That's mad.

[00:13:57]The busiest lock system in the world. To move heavy cargo from the mines of the upper Midwest to the steel mills of the lower lakes, massive freighters must navigate the St. Mary's River, which connects Lake Superior to Lake Hiron.

[00:14:10]Okay.

[00:14:10]>> However, the river features a treacherous 21 ft drop over a series of violent rapids. The solution is the Sue locks located in Sue St. Marie, Michigan. These engineering marvels are the busiest lock system in the world based on the tonnage of cargo that passes through.

[00:14:26]>> I don't know what a lock system is.

[00:14:29]I assume it's this. But what does it do?

[00:14:32]>> Handling around 10,000 vessel passages a year. The locks lift and lower massive ships carrying 86 million TONS OF CARGO.

[00:14:39]>> OH, it the the locks is the things that like drain the water to pull it on level with the next part of the water, right?

[00:14:49]Why don't the water just naturally go down or whatever? Why do you have to do the lock? Like what is the exact reason for the lock? primarily iron ore, coal, and grain. This single geographic choke point is so critical that any prolonged shutdown would send shock waves through the entire North American manufacturing economy.

[00:15:07]>> Oh, really?

[00:15:09]The drinking foul for millions.

[00:15:12]>> Beyond global trade and heavy industry, the most critical function of the Great Lakes today is sustaining human life.

[00:15:19]They act as the primary drinking fountain for more than 30 million people in the United States and Canada. This staggering reliance makes water quality management one of the most pressing human geography issues of the 21st century. The lakes face constant modern threats, agricultural runoff causing toxic algae blooms, particularly in the shallow warmer waters of Lake Erie, legacy industrial pollution and invasive species like zebra muscles that disrupt the food web. Protecting this watershed requires >> Wait, how do you even deal with stuff like that? So like let's say that like the the the companies are putting their you know their sewer stuff or like you know their waste into the lakes that you drink from. How like I I know you filtering that but oh man that's gross of species like zebra muscles that disrupt the food web. Protecting this watershed requires constant complex international cooperation between two federal governments, eight US states, two Canadian provinces and numerous tribal nations. Right.

[00:16:18]>> Incredibly complex islands. Oh, is there islands in the Great Lakes?

[00:16:22]>> Well, usually associated with vast open horizons. The Great Lakes.

[00:16:27]>> Oh, that's beautiful. Look at that. Look at that. I'd think I'm like in somewhere like the Caribbean or something.

[00:16:33]>> Also boast a surprisingly complex island geography. There are over 35,000 islands scattered throughout the system, creating unique isolated ecosystems and isolated >> m human communities. Crown jewel of this island system is Manatulan Island, located in the Canadian waters of Lake Huron. Not only is it the largest freshwater island in the world, large enough to support a permanent population of around 13,000 people, but its geography gets even more bizarre.

[00:17:01]Manulan is so large that it contains over 100 of its own lakes.

[00:17:06]Fascinatingly, some of those lakes are large enough to contain their own islands, creating mind-bending geographical anomaly. Wait, so so an island in a lake has its own lakes with also islands in their lake? Bro, what is going on?

[00:17:24]>> Of islands on lakes on an island in a lake?

[00:17:26]>> What is going on? Yo, do those islands in the lake of the island in the lake?

[00:17:31]Do they happen to also have lakes in the island of the island of the lake? I'm lost. I'm confused. International Maritime Highway. The Great Lakes aren't just an internal transport network.

[00:17:43]They're connected directly to the global economy via the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway. Completed in the 1950s, this massive system of locks, canals, and dredged channels allows deep draft oceangoing vessels, often called salties, from all over the globe to sail straight into the heart of the North American continent. Because of this artificial geographic connection, a ship can load a cargo of grain at the port in Duth, Minnesota, which holds the title of being the furthest inland freshwater port in the world, and sail continuously for over 2,300 m, bypassing waterfalls and rapids, until it reaches the Atlantic Ocean and heads off to international markets.

[00:18:22]>> There's not another single ge that would take so long. How long does it take on average? You know what? I'm actually curious to like the information of like how much money did they make? What do they charge? Like you know in like transportation because that ship is carrying all all its cargo but that's got to be expensive cuz it can only carry so much. I know it's a big ship but it could only carry so much and it's got to travel all the way which is going to take weeks cuz like ships don't travel fast, right? And then it's got to go across the ocean. Bro, that's how long does it travel? Let's say like this is go coming to the UK, right?

[00:19:04]I don't I know you guys aren't going to tell me about every single information about it, but maybe I should find a video. I don't know. That's actually interesting.

[00:19:11]>> The Atlantic Ocean and heads off to international markets. There's not a single geographic feature more prominent or more important to the United States and Canada as the Great Lakes. They are, for lack of a better term, the continent's savings account when it comes to fresh water. And because of that, they've developed as one of the most important cultural and economically powerful regions in the world.

[00:19:34]>> For sure.

[00:19:35]>> The fact it provides so much fresh water is insane. But very good video, very interesting video. Let me know how you guys enjoyed this in the comment section. If you guys did enjoy, make sure leave a thumbs up. Subscribe for more content. I do stream every single day on twitch.tv/l3wg if you guys want to check me out over there. I'll see you on the next one.

[00:19:54]Peace.