'Lake Michigan-Huron' is a designation sometimes given to the body of water (part of the North American
Great Lakes) customarily referred to as two separate lakes:
Lake Michigan and
Lake Huron. Hydrologically, however, they form part of the same body of water: they lie at the same surface elevation (580 feet), and the flow between them through the
Straits of Mackinac — which are 5 miles (8 km) wide and 120 feet (40 m) deep — sometimes reverses from eastward to westward. If designated as a single entity, Lake Michigan-Huron would be the largest of the Great Lakes in terms of surface area, at 45,410 square miles, and would be the largest freshwater lake in the world.
Lake Superior still surpasses Lake Michigan-Huron in terms of overall water volume, containing nearly 3,000 cubic miles (13,000 km³) of water, compared to Michigan-Huron's 2,000 cubic miles (8,000 km³), which makes Lake Michigan-Huron the fourth largest freshwater lake by volume in the world (the first and second being
Lake Baikal and
Lake Tanganyika).
There were earlier variations of the lake during the last
ice age:
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Lake Chicago - southern tip of the current Lake Michigan
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Lake Stanley - northern tip of the current Lake Michigan during the glacial retreat
See also
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List of lakes by area
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List of lakes by volume
External links
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Michigan and Huron: One Lake or Two?
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Lake Iroquois