Great Lakes Mesoscale convective complexs or MCCs can cause damage to wide swaths of forest and shatter glass in city buildings. These storms mainly occur during the night, and the systems sometimes have small embedded tornadoes, but more often straight-line winds accompanied by intense lightning. Historically, the Great Lakes, in addition to their lake ecology, were surrounded by various forest ecoregions (except in a relatively small area of southeast Lake Michigan where savanna or prairie occasionally intruded). Logging, urbanization, and agriculture uses have changed that relationship. In the early 21st century, Lake Superior's shores are 91% forested, Lake Huron 68%, Lake Ontario
Great Lakes Council the Great Lakes Council local government area was significantly lower than the national average. The median weekly income for residents within the Great Lakes Council area was nearly half the national average. At the 2011 census, the proportion of residents in the Great Lakes Council local government area who stated their ancestry as Australian or Anglo-Saxon exceeded 82 per cent of all residents (national average was 65.2 per cent). In excess of 66% of all residents in the Great Lakes Council area nominated a religious affiliation with Christianity at the 2011 census, which was significantly higher than the national average