@mehcuda67@sammydog01
Lake St. Clair is a wonderful lake. My Grandfather put a lake house in my Grandmother’s name in case things got bad in the Depression.
They did get bad and Grandaddy lost all his drugstores except one. They lived in the lake house for a time. But it was pretty cool, the liquor smugglers used his beach and used to leave a case of booze under the porch for passage. For all I know, it was Joe Kennedy’s crew, since Joe was big into that sort of thing at the time.
Grew up on Lake Erie although at the time swimming in some of the places along it was risky as at one point it was polluted all the way to the bottom (only about 60’ deep if I remember correctly). Of course the Cuyahoga River, which drains into it at Cleveland, caught on fire at one point. I believe it melted a railroad bridge. I remember as a kid school trips on the Good Ship Lollypop and dead rats, planks, etc. floating in the river, there were oil slicks… If you ignored that it was a really interest school trip. Fortunately a major effort was made to clean it up.
Also cool was seeing the wind blow ice on shore (although I am sure those who lived in those houses were not happy) and the pile up of ice was pretty cool to see.
When I visit my mom who still lives there I take her to a small park that has a little spit of land that goes out into it a bit to see the sunset over the lake. It’s really lovely then with the sound of the waves breaking on the shore, maybe some boats on the lake, sea birds and a large expanse of sky colored in sunset…
When I lived in Chicago we used to spend a lot of time at the beach at Lake Michigan - the lake effect made it cooler in the summer, warmer in winter. And in the winter the city would dump all the snow from the street plowing on the shore making these huge snow hills, and you could watch big ice chunks slam up against the seawalls.
The lake was surprisingly clean, thanks to a dirty little trick back in 1900 that reversed the flow of the Chicago River to send all the sewer waste to the Mississippi. You’re welcome, St Louis!
@stolicat I think we can all agree that Chicago is a cesspool and they’ve done great damage down AND up that river system. Never mind dumping directly into the lake.
@matthew this is amazing! I have so missed delighting in your wonderful creative artistic mind lately (outside of some cool t-shirt designs)!
I do so hope that this is the first of many new commissioned videos (and I would never say no to a new season of PHC…)
With deepest respect and admiration, I remain your ever faithful fan!
Born near Lake Huron. (Midland) Grew up along Lake Michigan. (Traverse City) Got near enough to Lake Erie to smell it (Sandusky and Cleveland) Got cramped feet in Lake Superior (Don’t remember exactly where but my God was it cold in August). Flew over lake Ontario. (Does that count?)
second-largest by total volume, containing 21% of the world’s surface fresh water by volume. The total volume (measured at the low water datum) is 5,439 cubic miles (22,671 km3),[5] slightly less than the volume of Lake Baikal (5,666 cu mi or 23,615 km3, 22–23% of the world’s surface fresh water).
@unksol if my just-got-up and coffee-not-quite-kicking-in calculations are close, the water from the Great Lakes would cover the land area of the earth (assuming it was smooth with no mountains or valleys) with about 6" of water.
@stolicat@unksol See, Unk, when a girl dog meets a boy dog she likes, they get married. A little while later, she has some baby dogs, which grow up into big, strong adult doggies. Then those doggies meet other doggies, they get married, and so on. Do you have any questions? It can be very confusing.
Putting that into the perspective of climate change, around 90% of all fresh water on the Earth’s surface is held in the Antarctic ice sheet, an amount equivalent to 70 m of water in the world’s oceans. The 20-23% each figures for Lake Baikal and the Great Lakes are for liquid surface water (rivers and lakes). This refers to all of it. When that tank is empty, we’re done for.
2.4 inches vs 70m (= ~ 230 feet, or ~2,700 inches, or ~ a 20 story building, about 1000 times greater).
That’s why climate change is a very big deal.
To all the deniers: What if you’re wrong?
@Kidsandliz right hence the camping question. I just wanted to canoe the boundary Waters some day. No fancy sailboat for me. The Canada entry permits to camp on their side just seemed like extra hassle
@unksol The Quetico looks very similar to the Boundary Waters. Both parks only give out a limited number of permits so if you plan to paddle there take that into consideration.
@Kidsandliz they usually have some towards the end of the summer when it’s cooler. Trust me it’s been thought out for years just never had the time. There will need to be some updates if I ever get the chance
@unksol “when it is cooler”… yeah when your canoe paddle freezes to the bottom of the canoe, your shoes freeze and sitting on them to warm them up and thaw them out freezes your butt (trust me putting your feet into damp half frozen shoes does not mean they will thaw out and warm up any time soon)… On the up side the night freezes kill all the bugs.
@unksol I was north of Lake Nipigon and snow the last week in August was common. Oh and if you misjudge, don’t sleep on or with your wet shoes to keep them from freezing, trust me on this - standing in the water will melt the ice on your shoes but your feet will still be freezing and now much wetter. Not a good choice (yeah I was a dumb ass and didn’t think that through ).
@Kidsandliz I was at least going to bring sleeping pads to stay off the ground and my boots have been waterproof for years. I guess if you got water in your footwear that would suck
@unksol I only had sneakers. Didn’t have room for boots - plus students don’t have them and it doesn’t go over well when staff have things the participants didn’t. Also remember when it is colder air mattresses (unless they also have foam in them) don’t insulate as well from the cold from the ground.
@unksol Meant to say you need to sleep on or with your wet shoes to keep them from freezing. In fact I put all my clothes, even dry shoes I was going to wear the next day in my sleeping bag or under it so I wasn’t putting on freezing cold clothes/shoes in the morning. I am a wimp. I don’t roll in the snow after a sauna either and hate the run and dip in freezing water that outward bound and many other outdoor adventure programs do. Nope. I like being warm and hate freezing water.
In the Canadian Rockies our tent, before we staked it down while putting it up blew into a lake that still had big chunks of ice in it (we were at around 8000 feet) and I was ready to do without as the water was so damn cold (we also had a tarp and the rainfly so it wasn’t like we couldn’t have coped the rest of the trip). I did not want to go in to get it. Fortunately for me my crazy sister actually was in that water swimming (how I don’t know as you stand there for 2 seconds and your legs are then bright red and freezing cold) and put her head in (then got an instant ice cream headache) and went to get it. Plus some guy decided to help since we were, apparently, helpless because we were girls LOL.
Just saw an installment of a documentary series that talked about the severe decline of the native lake perch population in Lake Michigan - because of changing temperatures, the ice is breaking up and melting earlier, at a rate that averages about 1 day earlier per year over the past decade or more.
The lake perch breed on a lunar and length of day schedule, and the survivor of the newly hatched fry are dependent on the seasonal algae bloom, which is their main food source. Problem is, now, the bloom is happening earlier in the year because of the rising temperatures and melting ice, and the algae are all consumed by other fish by the time the fry hatch out, so survival rate is very low.
One of the consequences of all this, aside from the destruction of some of the local fishing industry, is that the traditional Wisconsin Friday Fish Fries in the towns that depended on Lake Michigan perch, where it was always all the perch you can eat (and I did, a lot!), now serve mostly Cod from the east coast and perch imported from the Canadian side of Lake Ontario.
There was an equally upsetting segment on the loss of wild oysters from Florida bays due to changes in the rainfall patterns, but I’ll save that one for later.
O…
M…
G…
this… is… new… whhhaaaaaaaat?
edit: I had to come back and star it, since I won’t star repeat videos… I still am not sure what to think about this new video thing… I’m lost…
The kind of entertainment that keeps me coming to Meh.com.
I grew up close to Lake Ontario. Just in case anyone wondered. Or cared. Never mind.
@sammydog01 So by lakes Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Superior as well?
Cool.
@sammydog01 @therealjrn What about Lake St. Clair? It’s a good lake.
@mehcuda67 @sammydog01
Lake St. Clair is a wonderful lake. My Grandfather put a lake house in my Grandmother’s name in case things got bad in the Depression.
They did get bad and Grandaddy lost all his drugstores except one. They lived in the lake house for a time. But it was pretty cool, the liquor smugglers used his beach and used to leave a case of booze under the porch for passage. For all I know, it was Joe Kennedy’s crew, since Joe was big into that sort of thing at the time.
God Bless America.
@sammydog01 @therealjrn Like DNA, free enterprise will always find a way.
@sammydog01 @therealjrn In grade school we remembered them by the acronym HOMES
Grew up on Lake Erie although at the time swimming in some of the places along it was risky as at one point it was polluted all the way to the bottom (only about 60’ deep if I remember correctly). Of course the Cuyahoga River, which drains into it at Cleveland, caught on fire at one point. I believe it melted a railroad bridge. I remember as a kid school trips on the Good Ship Lollypop and dead rats, planks, etc. floating in the river, there were oil slicks… If you ignored that it was a really interest school trip. Fortunately a major effort was made to clean it up.
Also cool was seeing the wind blow ice on shore (although I am sure those who lived in those houses were not happy) and the pile up of ice was pretty cool to see.
When I visit my mom who still lives there I take her to a small park that has a little spit of land that goes out into it a bit to see the sunset over the lake. It’s really lovely then with the sound of the waves breaking on the shore, maybe some boats on the lake, sea birds and a large expanse of sky colored in sunset…
Great Song about the river burning
@Kidsandliz cool stories! And I
Randy Newman.
@Kidsandliz Don’t worry. People are working hard to make the river and lake nasty again.
@craigthom Too bad
When I lived in Chicago we used to spend a lot of time at the beach at Lake Michigan - the lake effect made it cooler in the summer, warmer in winter. And in the winter the city would dump all the snow from the street plowing on the shore making these huge snow hills, and you could watch big ice chunks slam up against the seawalls.
The lake was surprisingly clean, thanks to a dirty little trick back in 1900 that reversed the flow of the Chicago River to send all the sewer waste to the Mississippi. You’re welcome, St Louis!
https://interactive.wttw.com/chicago-river-tour/how-chicago-reversed-river-animated
@stolicat that article was very interesting. Thanks for linking it.
@stolicat I think we can all agree that Chicago is a cesspool and they’ve done great damage down AND up that river system. Never mind dumping directly into the lake.
And I’ve peed in all but Ontario. I need to rectify this at some point.
@fuzzmanmatt as a Torontonian, I assume that’s where most of my pee ends up… Processed first, I hope!
@fuzzmanmatt I’ve put my hand in all of them. Now I regret that.
Back in the late '90s I did it two years in a row.
I finished driving around all of them in 1999 by completing the Soo to Thunder Bay leg.
@matthew this is amazing! I have so missed delighting in your wonderful creative artistic mind lately (outside of some cool t-shirt designs)!
I do so hope that this is the first of many new commissioned videos (and I would never say no to a new season of PHC…)
With deepest respect and admiration, I remain your ever faithful fan!
Born near Lake Huron. (Midland) Grew up along Lake Michigan. (Traverse City) Got near enough to Lake Erie to smell it (Sandusky and Cleveland) Got cramped feet in Lake Superior (Don’t remember exactly where but my God was it cold in August). Flew over lake Ontario. (Does that count?)
@Mehrocco_Mole
I was born in Midland too, and now live in Sanford.
Super small world!
@punkynpye Lived in Jefferson Acres, Went to Seibert/Adams Elementary. Jefferson Jr. High. Spent a lot of time at Sanford Lake.
@Mehrocco_Mole @punkynpye
I… What… I thought Matt and new videos died.
For the nerds cause I wanted volume. From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes
second-largest by total volume, containing 21% of the world’s surface fresh water by volume. The total volume (measured at the low water datum) is 5,439 cubic miles (22,671 km3),[5] slightly less than the volume of Lake Baikal (5,666 cu mi or 23,615 km3, 22–23% of the world’s surface fresh water).
@unksol if my just-got-up and coffee-not-quite-kicking-in calculations are close, the water from the Great Lakes would cover the land area of the earth (assuming it was smooth with no mountains or valleys) with about 6" of water.
@unksol or raise the sea level 2.4 inches.
@stolicat the real question is what’s up with
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Baikal
@stolicat why are there so many dogs
@stolicat @unksol See, Unk, when a girl dog meets a boy dog she likes, they get married. A little while later, she has some baby dogs, which grow up into big, strong adult doggies. Then those doggies meet other doggies, they get married, and so on. Do you have any questions? It can be very confusing.
@stolicat @therealjrn I hear there are procedures to prevent that
@stolicat @unksol
/giphy cone of shame
@stolicat @unksol
Putting that into the perspective of climate change, around 90% of all fresh water on the Earth’s surface is held in the Antarctic ice sheet, an amount equivalent to 70 m of water in the world’s oceans. The 20-23% each figures for Lake Baikal and the Great Lakes are for liquid surface water (rivers and lakes). This refers to all of it. When that tank is empty, we’re done for.
2.4 inches vs 70m (= ~ 230 feet, or ~2,700 inches, or ~ a 20 story building, about 1000 times greater).
That’s why climate change is a very big deal.
To all the deniers: What if you’re wrong?
One of these days I need to sail Lake Superior . I have sailed on all the others.
@CaptAmehrican do you get a cross border permit and camp? Or just stay on the boat and the American side?
@unksol On a boat you can be on the non-USA side. It is just when you go ashore you need to jump through the border entrance hoops.
@Kidsandliz right hence the camping question. I just wanted to canoe the boundary Waters some day. No fancy sailboat for me. The Canada entry permits to camp on their side just seemed like extra hassle
@unksol The Quetico looks very similar to the Boundary Waters. Both parks only give out a limited number of permits so if you plan to paddle there take that into consideration.
@Kidsandliz they usually have some towards the end of the summer when it’s cooler. Trust me it’s been thought out for years just never had the time. There will need to be some updates if I ever get the chance
@unksol “when it is cooler”… yeah when your canoe paddle freezes to the bottom of the canoe, your shoes freeze and sitting on them to warm them up and thaw them out freezes your butt (trust me putting your feet into damp half frozen shoes does not mean they will thaw out and warm up any time soon)… On the up side the night freezes kill all the bugs.
@Kidsandliz lol no just September or august no desire to freeze. Been up in Canada ethat time of year boating. It’s nice
@unksol I was north of Lake Nipigon and snow the last week in August was common. Oh and if you misjudge, don’t sleep on or with your wet shoes to keep them from freezing, trust me on this - standing in the water will melt the ice on your shoes but your feet will still be freezing and now much wetter. Not a good choice (yeah I was a dumb ass and didn’t think that through
).
@Kidsandliz I was at least going to bring sleeping pads to stay off the ground and my boots have been waterproof for years. I guess if you got water in your footwear that would suck
@unksol I only had sneakers. Didn’t have room for boots - plus students don’t have them and it doesn’t go over well when staff have things the participants didn’t. Also remember when it is colder air mattresses (unless they also have foam in them) don’t insulate as well from the cold from the ground.
@unksol Meant to say you need to sleep on or with your wet shoes to keep them from freezing. In fact I put all my clothes, even dry shoes I was going to wear the next day in my sleeping bag or under it so I wasn’t putting on freezing cold clothes/shoes in the morning. I am a wimp. I don’t roll in the snow after a sauna either and hate the run and dip in freezing water that outward bound and many other outdoor adventure programs do. Nope. I like being warm and hate freezing water.
In the Canadian Rockies our tent, before we staked it down while putting it up blew into a lake that still had big chunks of ice in it (we were at around 8000 feet) and I was ready to do without as the water was so damn cold (we also had a tarp and the rainfly so it wasn’t like we couldn’t have coped the rest of the trip). I did not want to go in to get it. Fortunately for me my crazy sister actually was in that water swimming (how I don’t know as you stand there for 2 seconds and your legs are then bright red and freezing cold) and put her head in (then got an instant ice cream headache) and went to get it. Plus some guy decided to help since we were, apparently, helpless because we were girls LOL.
Just saw an installment of a documentary series that talked about the severe decline of the native lake perch population in Lake Michigan - because of changing temperatures, the ice is breaking up and melting earlier, at a rate that averages about 1 day earlier per year over the past decade or more.
The lake perch breed on a lunar and length of day schedule, and the survivor of the newly hatched fry are dependent on the seasonal algae bloom, which is their main food source. Problem is, now, the bloom is happening earlier in the year because of the rising temperatures and melting ice, and the algae are all consumed by other fish by the time the fry hatch out, so survival rate is very low.
One of the consequences of all this, aside from the destruction of some of the local fishing industry, is that the traditional Wisconsin Friday Fish Fries in the towns that depended on Lake Michigan perch, where it was always all the perch you can eat (and I did, a lot!), now serve mostly Cod from the east coast and perch imported from the Canadian side of Lake Ontario.
There was an equally upsetting segment on the loss of wild oysters from Florida bays due to changes in the rainfall patterns, but I’ll save that one for later.
I recommend watching this at 2x speed, it’s pretty snazzy.