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 are a single body of water: They lie at the same surface elevation, 577 feet (176 m), and the flow between them through the Straits of Mackinac—which are 5 miles (8.0 km) wide and 120 feet (37 m) deep[citation needed]—sometimes reverses from eastward to westward. If designated as a single entity, 45,410-square-mile (117,600 km²) Lake Michigan-Huron would be the largest of the Great Lakes, and indeed the largest lake in the world, in terms of surface area (though smaller than the Caspian Sea). Lake Superior still surpasses Michigan-Huron in terms of overall water volume, containing 3,000 cubic miles (12,500 km³) of water compared with Michigan-Huron's 2,000 cubic miles (8,300 km³), which makes Lake Michigan-Huron the fourth largest freshwater lake by volume in the world (the first and second 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
