By now most people don’t need to be told that the B.P. oil spill is mammoth, gargantuan, Big Mac big. It has gotten so large, in fact, that it can be hard to conceptualize. We used the nifty Web site If It Was My Home to compare the spill in the Gulf of Mexico to some of the world’s other bodies of water. The result was quite eerie (well actually, larger than Erie).

The BP oil spill is now

Bigger than ...

Lake Erie

Lake Ontario

Chesapeake Bay

Long Island Sound

Salt Lake

Lake Tahoe

Lake Placid

Lake Champlain

Lake Titicaca

Lake Como (Oh no! George!)

Lake George

About the same size as ...

Lake Michigan

Lake Huron

Irish Sea

Lake Victoria

Aral Sea