Great Lakes Water Levels
August 22nd, 2010 at 9:32 pm by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
The water level of Lake Michigan is down one inch in the last month and the lake level has dropped a sizable 9″ in the last year. That’s because this has been a warm and sunny year with higher than average evaporation rates. While heavier rain has occurred much of the summer in the southern Lake Michigan area, much of that water drains into the Mississippi and not Lake Michigan. Sault Ste. Marie is down 6.22″ since Jan. 1st. Lake Superior is down 7″ in the last year. Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are all 13″ below the long term average level. Lake Erie is 5″ below average and Lake Ontario is exactly at their average level. With continued dry weather, the levels may drop another inch in the next two weeks. (picture by Andy on POSTED)
There was a good sized grass fire just west of Portland along the interstate this afternoon. I expect I’ll see more in the next week.
I was at work at the hardware store when we heard the sirens and seen the fire trucks coming up Grand River and getting on the expressway.
Last week when I was up in the Alpena area I noticed that what we called Squall Bay (a bay off of Thunder Bay) was for the most part dry. Years ago the water came all the way up to US 23 and was on both sides of the road at times. Now you it all just wet land but the water is a long ways out and grass and small trees are now growing where there once was water. The highway department (or some one else) even took the Squall Bay sign down on 23!
SlimJim
Lake Michigan/Huron (there are at the same level) is 45″ lower than the highest level which occurred in the fall of 1986 – so that’s almost 4 feet lower than the max. level recorded in recent decades.
And the water from Lakes Michigan and Huron pours out through the Niagara Falls and eventually out to the Atlantic.
In-land lake levels are down, too. My parents live on Sand Lake (between Cedar Springs & Howard City) and don’t dare take their pontoon boat out anymore for fear of putting a pin-hole in the pontoons as it now has to be drug out through the sand to launch. It’s sitting on bottom at the dock … and this spring we even added an additional section of dock to make it longer from previous years.
Alan – That’s true, however, the volume of the lakes are so great that it takes a LONG time for a particular molecule of water to exit one of the lakes, let alone make it all the way to Niagara.
I think for lake Michigan, it’s 99 years for a single molecule of water to make it out. That’s a lot of time to get evaporated, polluted or drank/flushed down the drain. If you’re a molecule of water in lake Michigan, I think you’re most likely to be evaporated instead of poured into the St. Lawrence.
That’s the replacement time or turn over time and its 99 years for lake Michigan, 191 for Lake Superior, 22 years for lake Huron, 6 years for lake Ontario and 2.5 for Lake Erie. I am sure that is just an estimate.
SlimJim
Here’s some details on the lakes that may be of interest. http://www.epa.gov/greatlakes/factsheet.html
Whoops I see you already had that information. but anyway that time is the turn over time so that in about a 100 years the water in lake Michigan is all new from the water a 100 years ago.
SlimJim
Bill,there is a TV show on the History Channel called How The Earth was Made. A few months back they had an episode about the Great Lakes. They talked about the glacers, the salt mines under Lake Huron, and the water levels. They said the reason Lake Huron and the big bay water levels is going down is because the earths crust is rising. What do you think? It was a pretty good episode.