ROCHESTER, N.Y. — So much of the Rochester region’s climate, industry, and recreation revolves around Lake Ontario, the smallest of North America’s five Great Lakes.
But did you ever wonder how the Great Lakes came to be? First Alert Meteorologist Nate Morris explains that the story started a billion years ago, when the only form of life on Earth was microbes in the ocean.
A mid-continental rift formed that we call the Keweenaw Rift and it tried to split the continent apart. But it failed, instead cooling down into softer volcanic rock. Similarly, half a billion years ago, another rift tried and failed to split the continent, and we call that the Saint Lawrence Rift.
Fast forward to around 100,000 years ago. Life has evolved, the Earth’s climate has evolved, and the Ice Age has begun. These giant, super-heavy glaciers covered a good portion of the Northern Hemisphere and scraped into that softer volcanic rock. Eventually, just over 10,000 years ago, those glaciers started to retreat but they did so unevenly. The spots where the glaciers disappeared were able to rise, because they didn’t have the weight of the ice above them.
Also, as they retreat, the meltwater from the glacier starts to fill those holes left when it scraped up all that volcanic rock. Eventually, they retreat all the way, and the rest is history.
How did Lake Ontario and other Great Lakes form? The story starts a billion years ago WHEC.com.
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