It'd take 693 years to resurface Lake Superior with a Zamboni, study says

Brian Manzullo | Detroit Free Press

We're all about answering the important questions on Michiganders' minds.

Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, covers more than 31,000 square miles. How long would it take to resurface the entire thing with a Zamboni if we started today?

You've sat through intermissions at hockey games before, so you know a Zamboni doesn't exactly move at a breakneck speed on a rink. And you know Lake Superior is massive. Now, thanks to a study conducted by U.P. Supply Co., we have official confirmation: You'll be long dead by the time it's done. In fact, humanity will have long forgotten about you.

Related: More than half of Great Lakes covered in ice

As we trudge through another Michigan winter and Lake Superior continues to freeze —at 76.8 percent frozen as of a few days ago — U.P. Supply Co. decide to calculate the math, using Lake Superior's surface area, the standard surface area of a North American ice rink and the speed of a single Zamboni.

More from upsupply.co:

1 frozen Lake Superior = 52,020,513 ice rinks. At about 7 minutes per rink it would take 364,143,591 minutes to resurface all of Lake Superior. That is 252,877 days. In all, that means it would take approximately 693 years to resurface Lake Superior in its entirety. The ice resurfacer will have driven approximately 39,015,384 miles.

That's one heck of an intermission.

Keep in mind, that's only if you didn't stop the Zamboni at all.

You'd have to take bathroom breaks, you'd have to gas up the Zamboni a few times (only a few), and of course you'd have to fuel up with a lot of pasties along the way. Like, a lot of pasties.

So we have just one more question: What about the other Great Lakes?

Glad you asked. We did the math.

How long it'd take to Zamboni the Great Lakes

Lake Superior: 693 years

Lake Huron: 502 years

Lake Michigan: 489 years

Lake Erie: 217 years

Lake Ontario: 160 years

Total: 2,061 years

The more you know.

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Contact Brian Manzullo: bmanzullo@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrianManzullo.

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