Lake · United States
Lake Michigan
One of the Great Lakes of North America
- Area
- 57,727km²
- Max depth
- 281m
- Average depth
- 84m
- Elevation
- 175m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 2,863km
- Volume
- 4,860km³
Lake Michigan is a lake in United States. It covers 57,727 km². On average it is 84 m deep, and 281 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 175 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.
The water
How warm is Lake Michigan?
The water is warmest in August, around 22 °C at the surface, and coldest in March, around 1 °C. The surface averages 20 °C or more in August: comfortable for most swimmers.
It does not normally freeze in winter.
On the shore, afternoons reach 22 °C on average in August and 0 °C in February. The driest month is February (55 mm of rain), the wettest October (104 mm).
Average surface temperature measured by the Landsat 8 satellite between 2013 and 2021 at the point furthest from the shore (119 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 | 3 | 4 | 1 | -2 | 58 | 12 | 1.4 | 30 |
| February | 2 | 3 | 0 | -3 | 55 | 9 | 3.0 | 28 |
| March | 1 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 63 | 10 | 5.3 | 24 |
| April | 2 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 96 | 13 | 6.5 | 22 |
| May | 5 | 8 | 10 | 7 | 102 | 13 | 7.6 | 19 |
| June | 12 | 16 | 16 | 13 | 93 | 13 | 8.6 | 16 |
| July | 19 | 22 | 22 | 19 | 78 | 13 | 9.3 | 16 |
| August | 22 | 22 | 22 | 21 | 88 | 13 | 8.1 | 18 |
| September | 19 | 22 | 20 | 18 | 83 | 11 | 6.8 | 22 |
| October | 14 | 17 | 14 | 11 | 104 | 12 | 4.2 | 26 |
| November | 8 | 11 | 8 | 5 | 69 | 11 | 2.6 | 28 |
| December | 5 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 65 | 11 | 1.0 | 29 |
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 82 years before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 176,006 km² of land.
- About 1,878 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 Michigan
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
Towns on the shore
- Milwaukee563,531 people
- Green Bay105,207 people
- Kenosha99,858 people
- Waukegan88,475 people
- Near North Side85,711 people
- Racine77,742 people
- Evanston75,527 people
- Lincoln Park66,959 people
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Muskegon County Airport (MKG), 73 km in a straight line.
Car hire at MKG airport (Muskegon)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 | 0.8 | 0.4 | 3.0 | 6.4 | 10.1 | 16.0 | 21.6 | 22.5 | 20.1 | 13.9 | 8.2 | 3.3 |
| 2020 | +2.0 | +0.9 | +1.4 | −0.6 | +0.2 | +1.3 | +2.3 | +0.8 | −0.6 | −0.7 | +1.1 | +0.4 |
| 2021 | +1.2 | −1.8 | +1.9 | +0.4 | +0.7 | +2.2 | −0.4 | +1.5 | +1.6 | +3.0 | +0.8 | +2.7 |
| 2022 | −0.9 | +0.4 | +0.2 | −0.5 | +0.7 | +0.8 | +0.5 | +0.3 | ±0.0 | −0.3 | +0.4 | −0.4 |
| 2023 | +1.7 | +2.6 | +0.7 | +1.1 | +1.7 | +0.6 | −0.6 | −0.1 | +0.2 | +1.0 | +1.3 | +3.0 |
| 2024 | +0.3 | +4.1 | +2.5 | +2.1 | +3.0 | +2.4 | +0.1 | +0.4 | +1.7 | +3.3 | +2.3 | +1.3 |
| 2025 | −0.3 | ±0.0 | +1.9 | +0.4 | −0.4 | +2.0 | +1.3 | +0.4 | +0.3 | +2.6 | +0.7 | −0.6 |
+1 warmer than usual −1 cooler than usual
CanadaAbout 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 (Q1169) · 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.
