Great Lakes & St Lawrence River Superimposed On Europe

Map created by Vivid MapsThe map above shows just how big the North America’s Great Lakes are and how far the St. Lawrence River flows.

The lakes cover 244,106 km² (94,250 square miles).

That’s the roughly the same as the land area of:

• Netherlands
• Switzerland
• Moldova
• Belgium
• Albania
• North Macedonia
• Slovenia
• Montenegro
• Cyprus
• Luxembourg
• Andorra
• Malta
• Liechtenstein
• San Marino
• Monaco
• Vatican City

Combined!

Or the same as the entire land area of the UK.

They have an Average depth of 18–146m (60–480 ft) depending on the lakes

Max. depth of 64–396 m (210–1,300 ft) again depending on the lakes

And a minimum Water volume of 22,671 km³ (5,439 cubic miles) or 9 billion Olympic sized swimming pools.

Here are the details for each lake:

	Lake Erie	Lake Huron	Lake Michigan	Lake Ontario	Lake Superior
Surface area	25,700 km² (9,910 sq mi)	60,000 km² (23,000 sq mi)	58,000 km² (22,300 sq mi)	19,000 km² (7,340 sq mi)	82,000 km² (31,700 sq mi)
Water volume	480 km³ (116 cu mi)	3,500 km³ (850 cu mi)	4,900 km³ (1,180 cu mi)	1,640 km³ (393 cu mi)	12,000 km³ (2,900 cu mi)
Elevation	174 m (571 ft)	176 m (577 ft)	176 m (577 ft)	75 m (246 ft)	182.9 m (600.0 ft)
Average depth	19 m (62 ft)	59 m (195 ft)	85 m (279 ft)	86 m (283 ft)	147 m (483 ft)
Maximum depth	64 m (210 ft)	228 m (748 ft)	282 m (925 ft)	245 m (804 ft)	406 m (1,333 ft)
Major settlements	Buffalo, NY Erie, PA Cleveland, OH Detroit, MI Lorain, OH Toledo, OH Sandusky, OH	Alpena, MI Bay City, MI Collingwood, ON Owen Sound, ON Port Huron, MI Sarnia, ON	Chicago, IL Waukegan, IL Gary, IN Green Bay, WI Sheboygan, WI Milwaukee, WI Kenosha, WI Racine, WI Muskegon, MI Traverse City, MI	Hamilton, ON Kingston, ON Mississauga, ON Oshawa, ON Rochester, NY Toronto, ON	Duluth, MN Marquette, MI Sault Ste. Marie, MI Sault Ste. Marie, ON Superior, WI Thunder Bay, ON

Here’s the typical water surface elevations and comparative lake depths of the Great Lakes:

St. Lawrence River

The Great Lakes then flow out to the Atlantic ocean via the St. Lawrence River.

Here are some key facts about it:

• Length: 500 km (310 mi) excluding the estuary. C. 928 km if included. This
• Basin size: 1,344,200 km² (519,000 sq mi)
• Discharge (below the Saguenay River): average 16,800 m³/s (590,000 cu ft/s) or 7 Olympic sized swimming pools per second

What do you think about the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River?