The shallowest Great Lake can raise seiches on a breeze
Lake Erie ranks fourth among the Great Lakes by area and eleventh worldwide, yet it is the shallowest, southernmost, and smallest by volume. Western depths average only 25 to 30 feet, so modest winds stack seiches that turn the basin into a quick-tempered sea.
Sitting 571 feet above sea level with about 9,910 square miles of surface split nearly evenly between the United States and Ontario, Erie takes most inflow from the Detroit River and empties via the Niagara toward hydroelectric turbines. Ontario forms the northern shore, while Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York wrap the west, south and east. Ships bypass Niagara Falls on the Welland Canal, part of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Iroquoian erielhonan—“long tail”—yielded Lac Érié on maps by about 1670 after earlier Lac du Chat labels. Louis Jolliet saw it in 1669, the earliest European sighting on record anywhere, and it was the final Great Lake that Europeans charted.
At contact, the Erie people who gave the lake its name lived on the southern shore, and the Neutrals, or Attawandaron, on the northern. Up to three glaciers advanced and retreated here, leaving temporary predecessors such as Lake Maumee, Lake Whittlesey and Lake Arkona at different heights. Glacial carving left a basin less than 4,000 years old in its present form.
Being shallowest also makes Erie the warmest Great Lake: in the hot summer of 1999 water approached the 85 °F ceiling that two nuclear plants need for cooling. Water passes through in about 2.6 years, the quickest turnover of the five, and levels usually bottom out in January or February and peak in June or July. Historic highs in summer 1986 reached 5.08 feet above datum; the winter 1934 low sat 1.5 feet below.
Most of its 31 islands, 13 Canadian and 18 American, lie in the west, Pelee Island being the largest, and Point Pelee National Park marks the southernmost tip of mainland Canada. Oliver Hazard Perry’s 1813 victory near Put-in-Bay wrote the War of 1812 onto these waters.
Source: Lake Erie
