Lake · Canada
Lake Athabasca
Large glacial lake in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada
- Area
- 7,529km²
- Max depth
- 243m
- Average depth
- 21m
- Elevation
- 207m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 2,540km
- Volume
- 155km³
Lake Athabasca is a lake in Canada. It covers 7,529 km². On average it is 21 m deep, and 243 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 207 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
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The water
How warm is Lake Athabasca?
The water is warmest in September, around 14 °C at the surface, and coldest in January, around 0 °C. Even at its warmest, the surface stays below 17 °C on average: this is cold water.
The lake usually freezes over for about 200 days a year, from around 3 November to 21 May.
On the shore, afternoons reach 21 °C on average in July and -22 °C in January. The driest month is February (17 mm of rain), the wettest July (81 mm).
Average surface temperature measured by the Landsat 8 satellite between 2013 and 2021 at the point furthest from the shore (127 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 | Ice | — | -22 | -30 | 24 | 6 | 0.7 | 10 |
| February | Ice | — | -19 | -27 | 17 | 5 | 2.0 | 10 |
| March | Ice | — | -10 | -19 | 25 | 7 | 4.6 | 12 |
| April | Ice | — | 0 | -7 | 31 | 6 | 6.7 | 14 |
| May | Ice | — | 11 | 4 | 46 | 9 | 8.8 | 14 |
| June | 5 | 8 | 18 | 12 | 62 | 12 | 10.1 | 13 |
| July | 10 | 13 | 21 | 14 | 81 | 12 | 9.1 | 12 |
| August | 14 | 15 | 18 | 12 | 78 | 13 | 7.3 | 12 |
| September | 14 | 15 | 11 | 5 | 56 | 10 | 5.4 | 13 |
| October | 7 | 12 | 1 | -4 | 39 | 9 | 2.6 | 11 |
| November | Ice | — | -12 | -18 | 29 | 8 | 0.8 | 10 |
| December | Ice | — | -20 | -27 | 23 | 6 | 0.3 | 10 |
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 4.1 years before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 291,489 km² of land.
- About 1,196 m³ of water flow out every second, on average.
- Its shoreline is 8.3 times longer than a circle of the same area: plenty of bays and inlets.
Around the shore
What's around Lake Athabasca
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Fort Chipewyan Airport (YPY), 114 km in a straight line.
Car hire at YMM airport (Fort McMurray)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 | -22.0 | -18.7 | -9.9 | 0.2 | 11.2 | 18.5 | 21.1 | 18.4 | 11.3 | 1.0 | -12.1 | -20.0 |
| 2020 | +2.4 | +0.3 | −2.6 | −3.9 | −3.5 | −1.5 | −0.9 | −1.5 | −2.3 | −3.4 | −2.5 | +1.9 |
| 2021 | +3.8 | −4.7 | +0.7 | −3.0 | −4.0 | +1.1 | ±0.0 | −0.7 | +0.6 | +2.7 | +1.7 | −7.0 |
| 2022 | −2.9 | −5.0 | −0.7 | −2.5 | −3.1 | −0.1 | −0.7 | +1.7 | +3.3 | +2.6 | +0.7 | −4.8 |
| 2023 | +3.8 | −3.6 | −2.8 | +1.5 | +6.8 | −0.2 | −0.8 | ±0.0 | +3.2 | +2.1 | +1.5 | +8.6 |
| 2024 | −2.7 | +2.3 | −1.2 | +0.8 | +0.2 | −3.7 | +0.8 | +0.3 | +1.6 | −0.3 | +0.9 | +2.1 |
| 2025 | +3.2 | −3.2 | −3.7 | −1.1 | +2.5 | −2.6 | −2.1 | +1.8 | +4.3 | +2.5 | +1.7 | −7.1 |
+1 warmer than usual −1 cooler than usual
Nearby
More lakes nearby
About 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 (Q272463) · 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.
