Where does Lake Erie get its water?

95% of Lake Erie's total inflow of water comes via the Detroit River and St. Clair River from all the Upper Lakes - Superior, Michigan and Huron. The remaining 5% comes from precipitation. Lake Erie is the shallowest and warmest of the Great Lakes and is especially vulnerable to fluctuating water levels.



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Although small in volume, Lake Erie is a thriving, productive environment.

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Currents in Lake Erie can be dangerous! Any current flowing faster than 2 mph is considered dangerous. Dangerous currents can exceed 5 mph — faster than an Olympic swimmer can swim.

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Since there was no channel linking Lake Huron to prehistoric Lake Erie, researchers believe Erie was in inland sea, with its water level controlled by the balance between the inflow from rivers draining into it, as well as precipitation and evaporation.

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Lake Erie is the second smallest Great Lake by surface area, and the smallest by volume. Because of this, the water of Lake Erie also has the shortest residence time. Water in this lake replaces itself every 2.6 years, as opposed to Lake Superior, which takes two centuries.

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Situated on the International Boundary between Canada and the United States, Lake Erie's northern shore is the Canadian province of Ontario, specifically the Ontario Peninsula, with the U.S. states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York on its western, southern, and eastern shores.

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Why is Lake Erie so important? Erie is the most biologically productive and diverse of all the Great Lakes due to its warm shallow waters. Alongside this astounding biodiversity, more than 11 million people get their drinking water from the Lake Erie watershed.

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About one-third of the total population of the Great Lakes basin is in the Lake Erie watershed. Approximately twelve million people live in the watershed, including seventeen metropolitan areas with more than 50,000 residents. The lake provides drinking water for about eleven million of these inhabitants.

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The major sources of phosphorus reductions were phosphorus outputs at wastewater plant discharges; eliminating phosphorous from laundry detergent; and no-till farming practices. Because of the phosphorus reductions, our Lake became much more clear and clean.

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There are no sharks in Lake Erie, pronounces Officer James Mylett of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR).

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The Great Lakes is the world's largest surface freshwater system. Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and Lake Erie all flow to the Niagara River. The total area drained by the Niagara River is approximately 684,000 km2.

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The lake was also an important strategic defense because of possible British invasion from the North. The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River offered avenues of assault if the British controlled them, making Lake Erie a vital link in America's plans to win the war.

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The average underwater visibility of Lake Superior is about 8 metres or 27 feet, making it the cleanest and clearest of the Great Lakes.

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Lake Erie has an astonishing 2,000-plus shipwrecks which is among the highest concentration of shipwrecks in the world. Only about 400 of Lake Erie's wrecks have ever been found. There are schooners, freighters, steamships, tugs and fishing boats among them.

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Cyanobacteria blooms (blue-green algae) are a frequent occurrence in the Great Lakes, particularly in Lake Erie, Green Bay, and Saginaw Bay. These blooms may cause fish kills and discolored or foul-smelling water, affecting both human and ecosystem health.

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Lake Erie is the fourth-largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and also has the shortest average water residence time. At its deepest point Lake Erie is 210 feet deep.



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The cause of the algae blooms Lake Erie's algae blooms are caused by runoff pollution. This type of pollution occurs when rainfall washes fertilizer and manure spread on large farm fields into streams that flow into Lake Erie.

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The first recorded swimmer to cross Lake Erie was Pennsylvania teenager Pat Budney in 1975. He swam from Long Point to Presque Isle in Pennsylvania, a distance of 26 miles that took him 26 ½ hours. The state park beach where he finished now bears his name.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio -- You can't see across Lake Erie to Canada. (Well, occasionally, on hot spring days a temperature inversion allows you to see a hazy image of land, 50 miles across the water.)

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The name of Lake Erie was taken from the Native Americans that lived along the south shore when Europeans arrived in the early 1600s. Erie is a short form of the Iroquoian word “Erielhonan” meaning long tail and refers to the Eastern Cougar.

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