H-O-M-E-S was the way geography students used to remember the five Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. Add Champlain and scramble. Yes, kids and teachers: S-C-H-M-O-E.

The five Great Lakes -- Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Superior and Lake Michigan -- are enormous inland seas hundreds of miles in length, covering 12,000 miles of shoreline.

This story appears in the December 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine. I grew up in the Great Lakes State, and for many years now, during my annual summer (yes, it has to be summer ...

A version of this story appears in the September 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine ... Like many others in the Great Lakes region, she also relies on the cold for a living.

After five years of steady drops, the lake has returned to average levels and could even stay below the mean this summer. For the month of April, the average water level for Lake Michigan/Huron — ...

That's why ABC 7 Chicago and Meteorologist Cheryl Scott teamed up with National Geographic to explore the fight to save the Great Lakes in a five-part series "So Great, So Fragile." Each episode ...

Crumbling shorelines: Due to the Great Lakes geography and the prevailing winds, our end of Lake Erie (the eastern half) not only gets pummeled by winter lake effect snow, but similar forces ...