Lake Superior Facts

Source: Simply Superior: The World's Greatest Lake Website

• Lake Superior is also called lake Gichigami by the Ojibwe meaning big water.

• The riding distance around the lake is approximately 2,300 kilometers or 1,450 miles.

• Superior's surface area makes it the world's largest freshwater lake

  and is greater than the combined areas of Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire.

• Superior contains 10% of the world's freshwater.

• The deepest point (40 miles north of Munising, Michigan) is 1,300 feet or 400 metres.

• If the shoreline was straightened out it would connect Duluth to the Bahamas.

• Lake Superior produces the greatest lake effect snows on earth.

  Average snowfall in parts of the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan is 200 inches or 5.5 metres per year.

• The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald off the shores of Sault Ste. Marie

  inspired Gordon Lightfoot to write this legendary tribute.