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 Life Magazine in downtown Erie, "Erie Life Magazine" was the only magazine in the Erie area not affiliated with either local broadcasters or the "Erie Times-News". In its first two years, Erie Life Magazine saw an unprecedented growth, increasing distribution from only 25 small, independent retail locations to over 640 big box retail points in four states and southern Ontario including Barnes & Noble, Borders, Wegmans Food Markets, Walmart, Walgreens, Country Fair, Giant Eagle Grocery Stores, Chapters, and Indigo Books and Music. Today, Great Lakes Life's readership is close to 100,000 readers. Due to the expanded readership, the publication was rebranded Great