Lake · United States · Canada
Lake Erie
One of the Great Lakes in North America
- Area
- 25,768km²
- Max depth
- 65m
- Average depth
- 19m
- Elevation
- 172m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 1,936km
- Volume
- 499km³
Lake Erie is a lake in United States. It covers 25,768 km². On average it is 19 m deep, and 65 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 172 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
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The water
How warm is Lake Erie?
The water is warmest in August, around 22 °C at the surface, and coldest in February, around 0 °C. The surface averages 20 °C or more from July to September: comfortable for most swimmers.
The lake usually freezes over for about 83 days a year, from around 8 January to 31 March.
On the shore, afternoons reach 24 °C on average in August and 0 °C in February. The driest month is February (55 mm of rain), the wettest October (97 mm).
Average surface temperature measured by the Landsat 8 satellite between 2013 and 2021 at the point furthest from the shore (115 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 | — | 0 | -4 | 59 | 13 | 2.7 | 26 |
| February | Ice | — | 0 | -5 | 55 | 10 | 2.6 | 23 |
| March | Ice | — | 3 | -2 | 69 | 12 | 4.9 | 20 |
| April | 2 | 5 | 8 | 4 | 76 | 14 | 6.3 | 19 |
| May | 9 | 12 | 14 | 10 | 93 | 14 | 7.5 | 16 |
| June | 15 | 18 | 20 | 17 | 94 | 14 | 8.9 | 15 |
| July | 21 | 22 | 24 | 21 | 97 | 15 | 9.2 | 15 |
| August | 22 | 23 | 24 | 22 | 77 | 13 | 8.3 | 16 |
| September | 21 | 22 | 21 | 18 | 95 | 12 | 7.0 | 18 |
| October | 16 | 19 | 15 | 12 | 97 | 14 | 4.4 | 24 |
| November | 10 | 13 | 10 | 6 | 73 | 14 | 3.0 | 26 |
| December | 4 | 7 | 4 | 1 | 70 | 14 | 1.6 | 27 |
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 19 months before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 679,903 km² of land.
- About 9,797 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 Lake Erie
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
Towns on the shore
- Cleveland365,379 people
- Buffalo258,071 people
- Erie99,475 people
- Lorain63,647 people
- Lakewood50,656 people
- Euclid47,676 people
- Leamington35,730 people
- Collinwood34,220 people
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Erie International Tom Ridge Field (ERI), 86 km in a straight line.
Car hire at ERI airport (Erie)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 | 0.0 | -0.3 | 2.8 | 8.2 | 14.0 | 20.0 | 23.8 | 24.0 | 21.3 | 15.4 | 9.5 | 3.9 |
| 2020 | +2.8 | +1.1 | +1.9 | −0.8 | −1.1 | +0.4 | +2.1 | +0.8 | +0.2 | −0.2 | +2.0 | +0.7 |
| 2021 | +1.4 | −1.3 | +2.9 | +1.3 | +1.0 | +1.4 | −0.3 | +1.5 | +1.2 | +3.3 | ±0.0 | +2.8 |
| 2022 | −0.6 | +0.6 | +1.3 | −0.6 | +1.7 | +0.8 | +0.4 | +1.0 | +0.1 | −0.1 | +0.7 | −0.1 |
| 2023 | +2.5 | +2.9 | +0.5 | +1.0 | +0.2 | −0.2 | +0.3 | −0.8 | ±0.0 | +0.7 | +0.8 | +2.9 |
| 2024 | +1.3 | +3.1 | +2.9 | +2.2 | +2.9 | +2.3 | +0.6 | +0.4 | +1.3 | +1.9 | +2.6 | +0.7 |
| 2025 | −1.1 | −0.3 | +2.7 | +0.8 | +0.1 | +0.8 | +2.0 | +0.2 | +0.5 | +1.9 | −0.2 | −1.1 |
+1 warmer than usual −1 cooler than usual
Nearby
More lakes nearby
Canada1,161 km² · 130 km away23°maxChautauqua LakeUnited States53.3 km² · 150 km away24°maxLake HuronUnited States59,399 km² · 297 km away19°maxLake SimcoeCanada767 km² · 282 km away21°maxLake OntarioUnited States19,347 km² · 335 km away22°maxRice LakeCanada95.4 km² · 325 km away24°maxAbout 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 (Q5492) · 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.
