Lake · United States · Canada
Lake Huron
One of the Great Lakes of North America
- Area
- 59,399km²
- Max depth
- 230m
- Average depth
- 60m
- Elevation
- 175m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 8,857km
- Volume
- 3,550km³
Lake Huron is a lake in United States. It covers 59,399 km². On average it is 60 m deep, and 230 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 175 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
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The water
How warm is Lake Huron?
The water is warmest in August, around 19 °C at the surface, and coldest in March, around 0 °C. It rarely averages 20 °C, but it stays above 17 °C from August to September: brisk, refreshing swimming.
The lake usually freezes over for about 57 days a year, from around 21 February to 18 April.
On the shore, afternoons reach 20 °C on average in August and -1 °C in February. The driest month is February (39 mm of rain), the wettest October (72 mm).
Average surface temperature measured by the Landsat 8 satellite between 2013 and 2021 at the point furthest from the shore (54 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 | 2 | 4 | 0 | -4 | 45 | 11 | 1.9 | 30 |
| February | 0 | 1 | -1 | -5 | 39 | 8 | 3.8 | 29 |
| March | Ice | — | 1 | -3 | 41 | 9 | 6.1 | 25 |
| April | Ice | — | 4 | 1 | 70 | 11 | 6.6 | 24 |
| May | 3 | 6 | 8 | 5 | 65 | 13 | 7.4 | 19 |
| June | 9 | 12 | 12 | 10 | 68 | 13 | 8.3 | 16 |
| July | 15 | 17 | 18 | 16 | 63 | 14 | 8.7 | 16 |
| August | 19 | 19 | 20 | 18 | 67 | 13 | 7.6 | 19 |
| September | 18 | 19 | 18 | 16 | 64 | 13 | 6.4 | 22 |
| October | 14 | 16 | 12 | 10 | 72 | 14 | 3.8 | 27 |
| November | 9 | 11 | 7 | 4 | 53 | 12 | 2.0 | 30 |
| December | 5 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 52 | 12 | 1.1 | 31 |
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 12 years before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 576,018 km² of land.
- About 9,162 m³ of water flow out every second, on average.
- Its shoreline is 10.2 times longer than a circle of the same area: plenty of bays and inlets.
Around the shore
What's around Lake Huron
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
Towns on the shore
- Sarnia72,125 people
- Midland24,353 people
- Collingwood21,793 people
- Owen Sound21,341 people
- Wasaga Beach20,675 people
- Alpena10,175 people
- Penetanguishene10,077 people
- The Blue Mountains9,390 people
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Alpena County Regional Airport (APN), 97 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 | -0.5 | -1.4 | 0.9 | 4.4 | 7.5 | 12.1 | 18.4 | 20.3 | 18.0 | 12.2 | 7.0 | 2.4 |
| 2020 | +1.8 | +0.1 | +1.0 | −1.0 | −0.9 | +0.8 | +1.9 | +0.9 | −1.2 | −0.8 | +1.5 | +0.7 |
| 2021 | +1.6 | −0.8 | +2.3 | +0.5 | +0.4 | +1.9 | ±0.0 | +1.5 | +1.1 | +3.2 | +0.6 | +1.9 |
| 2022 | −1.0 | −0.5 | −0.3 | −1.3 | +0.2 | −0.3 | −0.5 | +0.2 | +0.7 | +0.2 | +0.6 | +0.6 |
| 2023 | +2.1 | +2.3 | +0.9 | +0.9 | +0.5 | +2.6 | +1.2 | −0.5 | +0.6 | +1.2 | ±0.0 | +2.3 |
| 2024 | +1.2 | +3.9 | +2.5 | +1.6 | +1.9 | +2.8 | +1.4 | +0.9 | +1.6 | +3.0 | +2.1 | +0.9 |
| 2025 | ±0.0 | −0.2 | +1.6 | ±0.0 | −0.4 | +0.1 | +0.8 | +0.9 | −0.4 | +2.2 | −0.2 | −1.0 |
+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 (Q1383) · 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.
