Portal:Lakes
Portal:Lakes
A lake is a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from the ocean, although, like the much larger oceans, they form part of the Earth's water cycle by serving as large standing pools of storage water. Most lakes are freshwater and account for almost all the world's surface freshwater, but some are salt lakes with salinities even higher than that of seawater. Lakes vary significantly in surface area and volume.
Lakes are typically larger and deeper than ponds, which are also water-filled basins on land, although there are no official definitions or scientific criteria distinguishing the two. Lakes are also distinct from lagoons, which are shallow tidal pools dammed by sandbars at coastal regions of oceans or large lakes. Most lakes are fed by springs, and both fed and drained by creeks and rivers, but some lakes are endorheic without any outflow, while volcanic lakes are filled directly by precipitation runoffs and do not have any inflow streams.
Natural lakes are generally found in mountainous areas (i.e. alpine lakes), dormant volcanic craters, rift zones and areas with ongoing glaciation. Other lakes are found in depressed landforms or along the courses of mature rivers, where a river channel has widened over a basin formed by eroded floodplains and wetlands. Some parts of the world have many lakes formed by the chaotic drainage patterns left over from the last ice age. All lakes are temporary over long periods of time, as they will slowly fill in with sediments or spill out of the basin containing them. (Full article...)
The Great Lakes Storm of 1913 (historically referred to as the "Big Blow", the "Freshwater Fury", and the "White Hurricane") was a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that devastated the Great Lakes Basin in the Midwestern United States and Southwestern Ontario, Canada, from November 7 to 10, 1913. The storm was most powerful on November 9, battering and overturning ships on four of the five Great Lakes, particularly Lake Huron.
The storm was the deadliest and most destructive natural disaster to hit the lakes in recorded history. More than 250 people were killed. Shipping was hard hit; 19 ships were destroyed, and 19 others were stranded. About $1 million of cargo weighing about 68,300 tons—including coal, iron ore, and grain—was lost. The storm impacted many cities, including Duluth, Minnesota; Chicago, Illinois; and Cleveland, Ohio, which received 22 in (56 cm) of snow combined with winds up to 79 mph (127 km/h) and was paralyzed for days. The extratropical cyclone originated when two major storm fronts that were fueled by the lakes' relatively warm waters—a seasonal process called a "November gale"—converged. It produced wind gusts of 90 mph (140 km/h), waves estimated at over 35 feet (11 m) high, and whiteout snowsqualls. Winds exceeding hurricane force occurred over four of the Great Lakes for extended periods creating very large waves. The large size of the Great Lakes provides wind fetches (the length of water over which a given wind has blown without obstruction) of hundreds of miles, allowing huge waves to form. Rogue waves are known to occur on the Great Lakes, including waves reinforced by reflections from the vertical shores of some of the Great Lakes.
The U.S. Weather Bureau failed to predict the intensity of the storm, and the process of preparing and communicating predictions was slow. These factors contributed to the storm's destructiveness. The contemporaneous weather forecasters did not have enough data, communications, analysis capability, and understanding of atmospheric dynamics to predict the storm. They could not predict wind directions, which is key to the ability of ships to avoid or cope with the effects of storms. (Full article...)Do you have a question about lakes that you can't find the answer to? Consider asking it at the Wikipedia reference desk.
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- World Lake Database. International Lake Environment Committee Foundation. – provides a searchable database
- Global Lakes and Wetlands Database. World Wide Fund for Nature. – available for free download