Is there any other geographic region like the Great Lakes region?

January 5, 2018 2:48 PM

Is there any other geographic region like the Great Lakes area of western Michigan and eastern Wisconsin?

Hello geographers and geophysicists, if you are there!

I grew up in this Great Lakes Region. I've traveled widely, but not to every corner of the world. I have yet to encounter another area like this one, with the "lake effects" wind and cold, with the fertile soil and the thousands upon thousands of freshwater lakes of all sizes, many of them fed by underwater springs. I miss the smell of the earth in the growing season, and the dramatic thunderstorms that come in from Lake Michigan. I know that glacier activity created the topography, and I'm wondering if there are other places on earth like this one?

Thanks for any and all answers----much appreciated, hive mind!

posted by ragtimepiano to Science & Nature (10 answers total)

My physical therapist is from Siberia and she said her town did a student exchange with Michigan because the weather and terrain was so similar. I think the person who visited them was from Grand Rapids.
posted by selfmedicating at 3:44 PM on January 5, 2018

Best answer: As a fellow Great-Laker I love this question and am shocked to learn that yeah... Siberia really does look quite a lot like Ontario.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 5:39 PM on January 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have heard meteorologists say the Great Lakes are the only place on earth where there is lake effect snow. Not exactly a helpful answer, just an unsolicited factoid.
posted by sproggie at 6:55 PM on January 5, 2018

Well, there is a part of Wisconsin known as "Little Switzerland" because it reminded the Swiss settlers there of their homeland, a bit. I mean, no Matterhorn, etc.
posted by Chitownfats at 7:09 PM on January 5, 2018

Best answer: thousands upon thousands of freshwater lakes of all sizes

Finland might be the place you're looking for in this regard.

One side of my family is Finnish and they settled in northern Ontario - and my grandparents were fond of talking about how northern Ontario on the north shore of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior was very much like Finland.

AFAIK, the lakes were carved out by similar glaciation processes in both places.

The satellite views of where my family's from in Finland and the part of Ontario they settled in bear some obvious similarities on the lakes-and-forest front.

It's kind of no accident that the Upper Peninsula, Minnesota, Wisconsin and northern Ontario are home to a sizeable Finnish diaspora.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:18 PM on January 5, 2018

Not exactly what you were asking thing I didn't twig into until this past year is that fact that the Devonian limestone in Michigan and SW Ontario is from the same stata of rock as it's namesake in Devon, England.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:05 PM on January 5, 2018

Based mainly on looking at maps, I wonder whether northern and western NY State could be candidates. They're near the Great Lakes, and they have little lakes. What do you think, OP?
posted by JimN2TAW at 8:19 PM on January 5, 2018

You're going to want an ancient rift basin on a Precambrian craton, at moderately high latitude, that's been recently glaciated and is covered with boreal forest today. Which is a pretty good description of the Baltic Sea.
posted by wps98 at 8:44 PM on January 5, 2018 [2 favorites]

a lot of the lower land area around the altai mountains in russia/china/mongolia/kazakhstan is both taiga forested and somewhat lakey, although not quite as lakey as the great lakes region.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:48 PM on January 5, 2018

Vast regions are under discussion; hard to generalize, so let me be modestly precise. I lived in Novosibirsk, RF (Siberia, 55° N 83° E, not terribly far from the aforementioned Altai) for more than 2 years, including 3 winters. A lot of snow arrives over the long winter, but never in the wet paralyzing dumps typical of the Greak Lakes areas I've lived in: SE and NW Michigan, Chicago and now Buffalo. This was a dry continental climate, far from any large body of water (Lake Baikal is 900 miles to the east). Average annual temperature is 18 degrees colder than Buffalo. Nothing like anything I had experienced. Intractable snow and ice build up even on busy sidewalks. The Grand Rapids comparison puzzles.
posted by ck49 at 6:33 AM on January 6, 2018