The two Great Lakes surrounding Lower Michigan continue to lose water and are way down from the record highs just two years ago. ... Lake Huron lose over 3 trillion gallons of water in November.

Of the Michigan's 38.5 trillion gallons of water used between 2005 and 2014, nearly 32 trillion gallons, or about 80 percent, came from either Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Superior or Lake Erie.

Overall, only 5.5% of withdrawn Great Lakes water, 2.3 billion gallons per day, was consumed or otherwise lost in 2013. That sounds like a huge amount, and it is.

This usually happens in the fall, but the levels of all the Great Lakes are lower than they were one year ago. ... That’s a loss of over 3.5 trillion gallons of water in just a year’s time.

About 40.8 billion gallons of water a day were withdrawn from the Great Lakes basin last year, a 3% decrease compared to the previous year, a study found.

The five Great Lakes have a combined surface area of 94,250 square miles, roughly the size of the United Kingdom. And they vary greatly, with depths ranging from 210 feet in Lake Erie to over ...