Lake · Malawi · Mozambique · Tanzania
Lake Malawi
African Great Lake
- Area
- 29,544km²
- Max depth
- 704m
- Average depth
- 261m
- Elevation
- 476m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 1,719km
- Volume
- 7,720km³
Lake Malawi is a lake in Malawi. It covers 29,544 km². On average it is 261 m deep, and 704 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 476 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
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The water
How warm is Lake Malawi?
The water is warmest in February, around 28 °C at the surface, and coldest in July, around 24 °C. The surface averages 20 °C or more from January to December: comfortable for most swimmers.
It does not normally freeze in winter.
On the shore, afternoons reach 32 °C on average in November and 25 °C in July. The driest month is August (3 mm of rain), the wettest January (285 mm).
Average surface temperature measured by the Landsat 8 satellite between 2013 and 2021 at the point furthest from the shore (95 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 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 26 | 285 | 29 | 5.2 | 11 |
| February | 28 | 28 | 28 | 26 | 227 | 26 | 5.5 | 11 |
| March | 27 | 28 | 28 | 26 | 225 | 28 | 6.0 | 13 |
| April | 26 | 27 | 27 | 25 | 134 | 19 | 6.9 | 17 |
| May | 25 | 26 | 26 | 23 | 23 | 5 | 7.7 | 16 |
| June | 24 | 25 | 25 | 22 | 9 | 2 | 7.8 | 16 |
| July | 24 | 24 | 25 | 21 | 6 | 1 | 7.9 | 16 |
| August | 24 | 24 | 27 | 22 | 3 | 1 | 8.5 | 16 |
| September | 24 | 25 | 30 | 24 | 4 | 1 | 9.2 | 18 |
| October | 25 | 26 | 32 | 26 | 20 | 4 | 9.3 | 19 |
| November | 26 | 26 | 32 | 27 | 82 | 12 | 8.8 | 18 |
| December | 27 | 27 | 30 | 27 | 237 | 24 | 6.7 | 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 218 years before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 128,727 km² of land.
- About 1,120 m³ of water flow out every second, on average.
- Its shoreline is 2.8 times longer than a circle of the same area: plenty of bays and inlets.
Around the shore
What's around Lake Malawi
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
Towns on the shore
- Karonga69,486 people
- Nkhotakota31,974 people
- Monkey Bay16,867 people
- Nkhata Bay16,099 people
- Metangula14,835 people
- Liuli13,119 people
- Mbamba Bay8,997 people
- Manda8,393 people
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Lichinga Airport (VXC), 197 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 | 28.6 | 28.4 | 28.0 | 27.2 | 26.1 | 24.9 | 24.8 | 27.0 | 29.8 | 32.1 | 32.3 | 29.8 |
| 2020 | +0.1 | +0.6 | −0.6 | +0.3 | −0.5 | −0.6 | −1.2 | −0.1 | −0.6 | −0.4 | −0.4 | ±0.0 |
| 2021 | −0.4 | +0.4 | −1.0 | −1.0 | −1.1 | −0.5 | −1.1 | −0.8 | −0.9 | −0.9 | +1.0 | +3.3 |
| 2022 | −0.5 | −0.7 | −0.2 | +0.5 | −0.4 | −1.3 | −0.8 | −0.5 | −1.0 | −0.3 | +0.2 | −1.2 |
| 2023 | −0.6 | +0.7 | +0.3 | −0.2 | −0.1 | +1.2 | +0.1 | −0.2 | +0.8 | +1.3 | +0.4 | +1.2 |
| 2024 | −0.2 | +0.4 | +0.8 | +0.3 | −0.3 | −0.3 | +1.5 | +0.7 | +0.3 | −1.0 | +1.2 | +2.3 |
| 2025 | +1.6 | +1.9 | +0.7 | +1.0 | −0.4 | −0.1 | −1.1 | −1.0 | +0.8 | −0.3 | −1.2 | +0.6 |
+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 (Q5532) · 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.
