Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
would the volume of water that's able to flow through a fully opened chicago river lock actually be enough to substantively move the needle on a body of water the size of lake huron-michigan? i don't think so.
i mean, at 45,000 sq. miles, it's by far THE largest freshwater lake on the planet in terms of surface area. to lower it by even just 1' you're talking about removing ~9.4 TRILLION gallons of water!!!
and the chicago river lock is like 80' wide and 20' deep, so 1,600 sq. feet. you'd need a flow rate of about 300,000 gallons/second (for an entire year mind you) through those 1,600 sq. feet to lower the lake by 1 foot, which seems impossible to me.
to put that into perspective, the flow rate of niagara falls is usually around 600,000 gallons/second, give or take for seasonal adjustments. and that's freaking niagara falls, an utterly gigantic waterfall, one of the largest on the planet.
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If not the Chicago river alone, then re-diverting the flow of the Nipigon River up in Canada, which used to drain out into Hudson Bay, but was diverted into Lake Nipigon (which flows into Lake Superior). The flowrate of the Nipigon River into the Great Lakes system is twice the flowrate of the Chicago river out of the system.
Here's an interesting article on the Nipigon River diversion:
https://www.lakesuperior.com/the-lak...of-ebbs-flows/
The article blames the Chicago River reversal for all the low lake levels in Lake Michigan in the last half century.