Superior’s Level Hurting Other Great Lakes

Record low water levels in Lake Superior are threatening to leave other Great Lakes high and dry.

The lake accounts for nearly 40 percent of the water supply Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, which are already about 2 feet below their long-term average levels, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said Wednesday.

Lake Superior has lost about 1 foot of water in the past year and about 2 feet over the past decade due to a lack of rain and increased evaporation.

Water experts said it will take a sustained pattern of above-average precipitation to return the lakes to their average levels, the Journal Sentinel reported.

People think we have more control over Mother Nature than we do, or we should have more control, Scott Thieme, chief of the Army Corps of Engineers’ Great Lakes office for hydraulics and hydrology, told the newspaper about the locks, channels and hydro power generating facilities on the St. Marys River at the outflow of Lake Superior.

There are these massive structures, and they seemingly look like we can do a lot with them. But you don’t see precipitation and you don’t see evaporation, basin-wide.