Salt lake · Russia
Lake Elton
Russian salt lake and the largest in Europe
- Area
- 186km²
- Max depth
- 1m
- Average depth
- 9.3m
- Elevation
- -22m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 55km
- Volume
- 1.7km³
Lake Elton is a salt lake in Russia. It covers 186 km². On average it is 9.3 m deep, and 1 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 22 m below 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 July and -6 °C in January. The driest month is August (13 mm of rain), the wettest May (33 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 | — | — | -6 | -13 | 26 | 7 | 2.9 | 18 |
| February | — | — | -4 | -12 | 24 | 6 | 5.3 | 19 |
| March | — | — | 5 | -5 | 28 | 6 | 6.5 | 19 |
| April | — | — | 15 | 3 | 26 | 6 | 7.5 | 17 |
| May | — | — | 24 | 12 | 33 | 6 | 9.6 | 16 |
| June | — | — | 30 | 17 | 24 | 6 | 10.7 | 15 |
| July | — | — | 33 | 20 | 28 | 5 | 10.2 | 15 |
| August | — | — | 32 | 19 | 13 | 4 | 9.6 | 15 |
| September | — | — | 24 | 11 | 24 | 5 | 7.5 | 16 |
| October | — | — | 14 | 3 | 30 | 6 | 4.7 | 16 |
| November | — | — | 4 | -3 | 23 | 6 | 2.3 | 16 |
| December | — | — | -3 | -9 | 26 | 7 | 1.7 | 17 |
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
- Its catchment drains 10,531 km² of land.
Around the shore
What's around Lake Elton
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
- —beaches and swimming spots
- 2campsites
- —boat hire and water-sport clubs
- —marinas and slipways
- —ferry piers
- 2viewpoints
- —hotels, B&Bs and chalets
- —fishing spots
- —restaurants and cafés
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Volgograd International Airport (VOG), 176 km in a straight line.
OpenStreetMap 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 | -5.6 | -3.8 | 5.0 | 15.3 | 24.4 | 29.9 | 33.0 | 31.8 | 23.5 | 13.5 | 3.8 | -3.0 |
| 2020 | +5.3 | +5.7 | +6.2 | −1.5 | −2.1 | +2.4 | +2.9 | −2.3 | +0.7 | +3.4 | −0.5 | −3.5 |
| 2021 | +1.9 | −0.2 | −2.8 | +0.8 | +1.8 | +0.5 | +1.9 | +4.1 | −3.2 | −0.1 | +1.6 | +2.7 |
| 2022 | +3.2 | +4.9 | −1.6 | +2.4 | −5.0 | +0.4 | −1.5 | +4.0 | −0.6 | +0.5 | +1.0 | −0.2 |
| 2023 | +0.5 | +1.7 | +6.5 | +3.1 | −0.9 | −1.7 | −1.4 | +1.2 | +0.4 | +0.6 | +3.8 | +2.0 |
| 2024 | +0.9 | +1.5 | −0.3 | +5.9 | −2.6 | +1.2 | +1.5 | −0.7 | +2.3 | +0.4 | +0.9 | +1.7 |
| 2025 | +6.3 | +1.1 | +5.1 | +3.7 | +0.7 | −1.0 | +1.6 | −0.2 | +0.6 | +1.1 | +4.8 | +2.5 |
+1 warmer than usual −1 cooler than usual
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 (Q1101008) · 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.
