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Barrage Serre Ponçon Rousset Hautes Alpes 5
Chabe01 · CC BY-SA 4.0

FranceReservoir · France

Lac de Serre-Ponçon

Reservoir in France

Area
17.6km²
Max depth
90m
Average depth
72m
Elevation
757m a.s.l.
Shoreline
51km
Volume
1.3km³

Lac de Serre-Ponçon is a reservoir in France. It covers 17.6 km². On average it is 72 m deep, and 90 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 757 m above sea level.

Plan your visit

Stay, sail and get there

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6°5°7°10°15°20°22°22°20°16°12°8°JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec22°July

The water

How warm is Lac de Serre-Ponçon?

The water is warmest in July, around 22 °C at the surface, and coldest in February, around 5 °C. The surface averages 20 °C or more from July to August: comfortable for most swimmers.

It does not normally freeze in winter.

On the shore, afternoons reach 24 °C on average in July and 1 °C in January. The driest month is July (39 mm of rain), the wettest November (90 mm).

Average surface temperature measured by the Landsat 8 satellite between 2013 and 2021 at the point furthest from the shore (194 readings). Shallow bays and beaches are often warmer.

From above

The whole lake from space

Lac de Serre-Ponçon seen from space (Sentinel-2)
44.480°N 6.299°E · Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0 · Places © OpenStreetMap contributors

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

The year at the lake, month by month
MonthWater°CWater high°CAir high°CAir low°CRainmmRainy daysdaysSunh/dayWindkm/h
January671-74785.010
February562-74375.710
March786-45286.410
April101211057106.910
May151715474127.610
June202120954109.89
July2223241139810.810
August222323104289.89
September20211965398.19
October161813274106.09
November12146-290114.49
December8102-66294.59

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

Lac de Serre-PonçonWindermereLake Annecy5 km
Drawn to the same scale, next to lakes you may know.
  • On average, water stays in the lake for about 9 months before flowing out.
  • Its catchment drains 3,564 km² of land.
  • About 52 m³ of water flow out every second, on average.
  • Its shoreline is 3.4 times longer than a circle of the same area: plenty of bays and inlets.

Around the shore

What's around Lac de Serre-Ponçon

Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.

  • 29beaches and swimming spots

    Savin'Plage, Plage des Tremouilles, Bois Vieux, Port Saint-Pierre, Le Forreston and 24 more

  • 22campsites

    La Presqu’île, Les Chappas, La Cle des Champs, La Pinede, Aire camping car du Barnafret and 17 more

  • 5boat hire and water-sport clubs

    Spot de Boscodon, Sorties Voilier et Trimaran, La Petite Mer

  • 27marinas and slipways

    Port Saint-Florent, Base nautique de Chanteloube and 25 more

  • 2ferry piers
  • 37viewpoints

    Le Château, Belvédère de Pierre-Arnoux, Belvédère des Curattes, Belvédère de Sauze du Lac, Plage du bois vieux and 32 more

  • 15hotels, B&Bs and chalets

    Les Flots Bleus, Les Horizons du Lac, Les Chaumettes, Les Sources, Les Rodhos and 10 more

  • —fishing spots
  • 23restaurants and cafés

Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Cuneo International Airport (CUF), 105 km in a straight line.

Car hire at CEQ airport (Cannes)Discover Cars · Affiliate link

OpenStreetMap is built by volunteers: when a number is low, it may just mean nobody has mapped it yet.

Photos

Seen by visitors

Calif-Serre-Poncon
Bertrand Labévue · CC BY-SA 4.0
Chorges Lac de Serre-Ponçon 01
Zairon · CC BY 4.0

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.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
1991–2020 average1.12.36.310.814.920.123.523.318.613.46.52.0
2020+1.8+2.5+0.2+1.6+1.2−2.7+0.1+0.8±0.0−2.9+2.5−0.9
2021−2.1+2.7+0.8−1.8−2.4−0.1−0.4+0.1+0.8+0.1+0.1+1.1
2022+3.2+2.8+1.5+1.4+4.0+4.8+4.9+1.8−0.6+3.3+1.6+1.3
2023+1.3+4.0+2.4−0.1+0.5+0.4+2.3+2.2+3.7+3.1−0.3+2.2
2024+2.4+4.6+1.4+0.2−1.0−0.7+2.1+3.6−1.6+0.7+1.8+1.8
2025+2.2+3.1+1.7+2.2+1.7+5.2+1.1+2.3+0.5+0.3+0.6+2.8

+1 warmer than usual −1 cooler than usual

About these numbers

Outline, area, depth, volumeHydroLAKES v1.0 (Messager et al. 2016) · CC BY 4.0
Water temperature and iceLakeTEMP v1 (Korver et al. 2024), Landsat 8 2013–2021 · CC BY 4.0
Air, rain, sun, windNASA POWER, 1991–2020 · public domain
Names and descriptionWikidata (Q1799634) · CC0
Around the shore© OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL
ImagesEOX 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.

Read more on Wikipedia

The family

Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers, canyons, caves or dark skies?

Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.

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