Lake · Kyrgyzstan
Issyk-Kul
Lake in Kyrgyzstan
- Area
- 6,196km²
- Max depth
- 668m
- Average depth
- 280m
- Elevation
- 1,601m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 609km
- Volume
- 1,738km³
Issyk-Kul is a lake in Kyrgyzstan. It covers 6,196 km². On average it is 280 m deep, and 668 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 1,601 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
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The water
How warm is Issyk-Kul?
The water is warmest in July, around 20 °C at the surface, and coldest in February, around 4 °C. It rarely averages 20 °C, but it stays above 17 °C from June to September: brisk, refreshing swimming.
It does not normally freeze in winter.
On the shore, afternoons reach 23 °C on average in July and -3 °C in January. The driest month is January (13 mm of rain), the wettest May (52 mm).
Average surface temperature measured by the Landsat 8 satellite between 2013 and 2021 at the point furthest from the shore (112 readings). Shallow bays and beaches are often warmer.
From above
The whole lake from space
Month by month
The year at the lake, month by month
Not a forecast: these are averages over many years. Water is the 2013–2021 average; air, rain, sun and wind are the 1991–2020 average.
Water: 2013–2021 averageClimate: 1991–2020 average
| Month | Water°C | Water high°C | Air high°C | Air low°C | Rainmm | Rainy daysdays | Sunh/day | Windkm/h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 5 | 5 | -3 | -13 | 13 | 4 | 4.3 | 5 |
| February | 4 | 4 | 0 | -8 | 18 | 5 | 4.6 | 7 |
| March | 6 | 7 | 7 | 1 | 28 | 7 | 6.3 | 9 |
| April | 9 | 10 | 13 | 6 | 49 | 10 | 7.1 | 10 |
| May | 13 | 15 | 17 | 11 | 52 | 12 | 8.4 | 10 |
| June | 17 | 19 | 21 | 15 | 49 | 11 | 9.0 | 10 |
| July | 20 | 20 | 23 | 18 | 38 | 10 | 9.2 | 9 |
| August | 20 | 20 | 23 | 17 | 35 | 8 | 9.0 | 9 |
| September | 17 | 19 | 18 | 13 | 26 | 6 | 8.1 | 9 |
| October | 13 | 15 | 12 | 6 | 27 | 6 | 6.0 | 8 |
| November | 9 | 11 | 5 | -1 | 26 | 7 | 4.4 | 7 |
| December | 6 | 8 | -2 | -12 | 17 | 5 | 3.7 | 5 |
Water: LakeTEMP (Landsat 8, 2013–2021). Air, rain, sun and wind: NASA POWER, 1991–2020 averages. A rainy day has at least 1 mm of rain. Sunshine hours are derived from measured solar radiation.
Size & depth
How big, how deep
- On average, water stays in the lake for about 758 years before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 21,917 km² of land.
- About 73 m³ of water flow out every second, on average.
Around the shore
What's around Issyk-Kul
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
Towns on the shore
- Balykchy42,875 people
- Cholpon-Ata14,237 people
- Kadzhi-Say4,000 people
- Ak-Bulung2,498 people
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Issyk-Kul International Airport (IKU), 57 km in a straight line.
Car hire at ALA airport (Almaty)Discover Cars · Affiliate linkOpenStreetMap is built by volunteers: when a number is low, it may just mean nobody has mapped it yet.
Recent years
How each month compared
Afternoon high on the shore. The first row is the reference, the 1991–2020 average in °C; the years below show the difference from it: warmer in orange, cooler in blue.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991–2020 average | -2.6 | 0.5 | 7.0 | 12.8 | 17.0 | 20.8 | 23.3 | 23.0 | 18.5 | 11.8 | 4.6 | -1.6 |
| 2020 | −0.1 | +2.5 | −0.1 | +1.1 | +0.5 | −1.2 | −1.1 | −0.2 | −1.4 | −2.2 | −1.5 | −1.3 |
| 2021 | +0.4 | +3.0 | −0.9 | −1.6 | +0.7 | ±0.0 | +1.5 | −0.5 | +1.5 | −2.3 | −1.6 | +1.1 |
| 2022 | +2.2 | −0.7 | −0.4 | +2.2 | +0.8 | +0.3 | +1.4 | −1.0 | +2.7 | +0.7 | −0.4 | −0.6 |
| 2023 | −1.3 | +1.2 | +2.1 | −0.2 | −1.5 | +1.1 | +1.9 | +0.1 | −0.6 | +1.9 | +3.4 | +2.6 |
| 2024 | +3.2 | −0.9 | −1.1 | −0.3 | +1.2 | +0.7 | +0.3 | +0.9 | −0.2 | +1.2 | +1.3 | −1.2 |
| 2025 | +1.7 | +1.3 | −0.4 | +0.6 | +2.9 | +1.4 | +1.8 | +0.6 | +1.2 | +1.2 | +1.7 | +2.9 |
+1 warmer than usual −1 cooler than usual
Nearby
More lakes nearby
KazakhstanAbout these numbers
| Outline, area, depth, volume | HydroLAKES v1.0 (Messager et al. 2016) · CC BY 4.0 |
|---|---|
| Water temperature and ice | LakeTEMP v1 (Korver et al. 2024), Landsat 8 2013–2021 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Air, rain, sun, wind | NASA POWER, 1991–2020 · public domain |
| Names and description | Wikidata (Q42191) · CC0 |
| Around the shore | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
Every figure is an average or a count from a public dataset. Licences and methods: data sources.
