Reservoir · Costa Rica
Lake Arenal
Artificial lake in Costa Rica
- Area
- 85.6km²
- Max depth
- 55m
- Average depth
- 26m
- Elevation
- 548m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 125km
- Volume
- 2.2km³
Lake Arenal is a reservoir in Costa Rica. It covers 85.6 km². On average it is 26 m deep, and 55 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 548 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
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The water
Water temperature
There is no reliable satellite record of the water temperature for this lake yet.
On the shore, afternoons reach 33 °C on average in April and 27 °C in November. The driest month is February (9 mm of rain), the wettest October (289 mm).
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.
Climate: 1991–2020 average
| Month | Water°C | Water high°C | Air high°C | Air low°C | Rainmm | Rainy daysdays | Sunh/day | Windkm/h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | — | — | 28 | 20 | 13 | 2 | 5.2 | 16 |
| February | — | — | 30 | 20 | 9 | 2 | 6.3 | 17 |
| March | — | — | 32 | 20 | 10 | 2 | 6.7 | 16 |
| April | — | — | 33 | 21 | 40 | 6 | 6.1 | 12 |
| May | — | — | 31 | 22 | 187 | 17 | 4.5 | 9 |
| June | — | — | 28 | 22 | 177 | 19 | 4.1 | 8 |
| July | — | — | 28 | 22 | 131 | 17 | 3.4 | 9 |
| August | — | — | 28 | 22 | 176 | 19 | 4.1 | 8 |
| September | — | — | 28 | 22 | 252 | 23 | 4.7 | 6 |
| October | — | — | 27 | 22 | 289 | 22 | 4.1 | 7 |
| November | — | — | 27 | 21 | 132 | 13 | 3.5 | 10 |
| December | — | — | 27 | 20 | 28 | 5 | 4.4 | 13 |
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 3.4 years before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 499 km² of land.
- About 21 m³ of water flow out every second, on average.
- Its shoreline is 3.8 times longer than a circle of the same area: plenty of bays and inlets.
Around the shore
What's around Lake Arenal
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
- —beaches and swimming spots
- 4campsites
Wildcamping, Sunset camping y glamping, Campamento La Tronadora
- —boat hire and water-sport clubs
- 3marinas and slipways
- 1ferry piers
Aventuras El Lago
- 12viewpoints
Mirador de Volcán Arenal, Restaurante Mirador Rondorama, Viewpoint (especially good at sunset) and 9 more
- 54hotels, B&Bs and chalets
Linda Vista del Norte, Essence Arenal Travellers & Backpackers Resort, Hotel Los Héroes, Cabinas Canfinera, Lost Iguana and 49 more
- —fishing spots
- 38restaurants and cafés
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: La Fortuna Arenal Airport (FON), 34 km in a straight line.
Car hire at LIR airport (Liberia)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 | 28.1 | 30.0 | 32.3 | 33.3 | 30.9 | 28.3 | 28.2 | 28.4 | 27.9 | 27.0 | 26.9 | 27.3 |
| 2020 | −0.1 | +0.6 | +0.6 | +0.2 | +0.3 | −0.5 | −0.4 | −0.7 | +0.2 | ±0.0 | −0.3 | −0.8 |
| 2021 | −1.0 | −1.1 | −0.9 | −2.5 | −1.3 | +0.2 | −0.2 | −0.6 | −0.2 | +0.9 | +0.3 | +0.2 |
| 2022 | +0.5 | +1.0 | −0.8 | −1.4 | −1.9 | −1.6 | −0.6 | −0.5 | −0.6 | +0.4 | ±0.0 | −0.5 |
| 2023 | −1.0 | −1.2 | −1.8 | +0.1 | +2.0 | +0.8 | +0.6 | +0.9 | +2.1 | +0.8 | +0.8 | +0.6 |
| 2024 | +1.1 | +1.2 | +2.5 | +1.0 | +1.7 | −0.5 | −0.2 | ±0.0 | +0.2 | +0.6 | −0.3 | −0.3 |
| 2025 | −0.8 | −1.6 | −0.6 | −2.1 | −1.3 | −0.5 | −0.1 | −0.2 | +0.2 | +0.2 | +0.3 | −0.2 |
+1 warmer than usual −1 cooler than usual
NicaraguaAbout 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 (Q31938) · 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.
