Lake Michigan-Huron
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Lake Michigan-Huron is a designation sometimes given to the body of water (part of the North American Great Lakes) customarily referred to as two separate lakes: Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Hydrologically, however, they form part of the same body of water: they lie at the same surface elevation (580 feet), and the flow between them through the Straits of Mackinac — which are 5 miles (8 km) wide and 120 feet (40 m) deep — sometimes reverses from eastward to westward. If designated as a single entity, Lake Michigan-Huron would be the largest of the Great Lakes in terms of surface area, at 45,410 square miles, and would be the largest freshwater lake in the world. Lake Superior still surpasses Lake Michigan-Huron in terms of overall water volume, containing nearly 3000 cubic miles (13,000 km³) of water, compared to Michigan-Huron's 2000 cubic miles (8,000 km³), which make it the fourth largest freshwater lake by volume in the world (the first and second being being Lake Baikal and Lake Tanganyika).
There were earlier variations of the lake during the last ice age:
- Lake Chicago - southern tip of the current Lake Michigan
- Lake Stanley - northern tip of the current Lake Michigan during the glacial retreat
