Lake · Canada
Lake Winnipeg
Lake in Manitoba, Canada
- Area
- 23,923km²
- Max depth
- 36m
- Average depth
- 12m
- Elevation
- 215m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 4,018km
- Volume
- 284km³
Lake Winnipeg is a lake in Canada. It covers 23,923 km². On average it is 12 m deep, and 36 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 215 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
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The water
How warm is Lake Winnipeg?
The water is warmest in August, around 18 °C at the surface, and coldest in January, 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 187 days a year, from around 6 November to 11 May.
On the shore, afternoons reach 23 °C on average in July and -18 °C in January. The driest month is February (18 mm of rain), the wettest June (82 mm).
Average surface temperature measured by the Landsat 8 satellite between 2013 and 2021 at the point furthest from the shore (135 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 | — | -18 | -26 | 24 | 6 | 1.2 | 14 |
| February | Ice | — | -15 | -24 | 18 | 4 | 2.5 | 14 |
| March | Ice | — | -5 | -14 | 27 | 6 | 3.9 | 18 |
| April | Ice | — | 5 | -1 | 26 | 6 | 6.2 | 21 |
| May | 2 | 5 | 13 | 7 | 58 | 9 | 8.6 | 23 |
| June | 9 | 12 | 20 | 15 | 82 | 11 | 8.3 | 21 |
| July | 15 | 17 | 23 | 19 | 74 | 12 | 8.8 | 21 |
| August | 18 | 19 | 21 | 17 | 72 | 10 | 7.4 | 22 |
| September | 17 | 19 | 14 | 10 | 62 | 9 | 5.7 | 22 |
| October | 9 | 14 | 5 | 1 | 44 | 8 | 3.2 | 21 |
| November | Ice | — | -6 | -14 | 26 | 6 | 1.7 | 15 |
| December | Ice | — | -16 | -23 | 20 | 4 | 1.2 | 14 |
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 4.0 years before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 919,612 km² of land.
- About 2,245 m³ of water flow out every second, on average.
- Its shoreline is 7.3 times longer than a circle of the same area: plenty of bays and inlets.
Around the shore
What's around Lake Winnipeg
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
Towns on the shore
- Gimli2,246 people
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: The Pas Airport (YQD), 187 km in a straight line.
Car hire at YTH airport (Thompson)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 | -17.7 | -14.9 | -5.0 | 4.7 | 12.8 | 19.6 | 23.0 | 20.9 | 14.5 | 4.8 | -6.5 | -15.5 |
| 2020 | +3.4 | +2.3 | −0.7 | −3.5 | −0.6 | −0.5 | +0.8 | +0.7 | −2.1 | −2.8 | −1.5 | +2.7 |
| 2021 | +4.8 | −3.7 | +3.8 | −0.1 | −0.6 | +1.3 | +1.3 | −1.0 | +2.0 | +4.1 | +2.6 | −2.5 |
| 2022 | −3.2 | −4.6 | −1.8 | −2.7 | −1.1 | −1.5 | −0.6 | +0.8 | +1.5 | +0.7 | +0.3 | −1.8 |
| 2023 | +1.8 | −0.5 | −3.2 | −1.5 | +5.1 | +4.0 | −2.1 | +0.1 | +3.2 | +1.5 | +1.5 | +8.3 |
| 2024 | +2.7 | +5.4 | −2.5 | +2.1 | −0.5 | −1.7 | +0.7 | +1.2 | +4.7 | +2.1 | +4.2 | +2.2 |
| 2025 | +0.4 | −2.4 | −2.8 | −0.8 | +2.3 | −1.4 | −0.5 | −0.1 | +2.9 | +3.5 | +2.3 | −3.2 |
+1 warmer than usual −1 cooler than usual
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 (Q3272) · 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.
