Lake · Canada
Tagish Lake
Lake in British Columbia and Yukon, Canada
- Area
- 352km²
- Average depth
- 80m
- Elevation
- 660m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 478km
- Volume
- 28.2km³
Tagish Lake is a lake in Canada. It covers 352 km². On average it is 80 m deep. Its surface lies 660 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
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The water
How warm is Tagish Lake?
The water is warmest in August, around 14 °C at the surface, and coldest in January, around 0 °C. Even at its warmest, the surface stays below 17 °C on average: this is cold water.
The lake usually freezes over for about 165 days a year, from around 8 November to 21 April.
On the shore, afternoons reach 15 °C on average in July and -12 °C in January. The driest month is April (35 mm of rain), the wettest August (82 mm).
Average surface temperature measured by the Landsat 8 satellite between 2013 and 2021 at the point furthest from the shore (103 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 | — | -12 | -19 | 59 | 14 | 1.6 | 9 |
| February | Ice | — | -10 | -19 | 36 | 11 | 3.7 | 9 |
| March | Ice | — | -7 | -17 | 40 | 13 | 6.4 | 10 |
| April | Ice | — | 0 | -8 | 35 | 10 | 8.7 | 9 |
| May | 5 | 8 | 8 | 0 | 46 | 13 | 9.2 | 9 |
| June | 10 | 12 | 13 | 4 | 68 | 16 | 8.7 | 9 |
| July | 13 | 14 | 15 | 6 | 75 | 18 | 8.1 | 9 |
| August | 14 | 14 | 13 | 5 | 82 | 17 | 6.7 | 9 |
| September | 12 | 14 | 7 | 0 | 79 | 17 | 4.7 | 9 |
| October | 6 | 10 | 0 | -6 | 76 | 18 | 2.7 | 9 |
| November | Ice | — | -10 | -16 | 58 | 16 | 1.2 | 8 |
| December | Ice | — | -12 | -18 | 58 | 15 | 0.9 | 8 |
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 5.2 years before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 16,014 km² of land.
- About 172 m³ of water flow out every second, on average.
- Its shoreline is 7.2 times longer than a circle of the same area: plenty of bays and inlets.
Around the shore
What's around Tagish Lake
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
- 4beaches and swimming spots
Carcross Beach
- 3campsites
Carcross Tagish First Nation Campground, Conrad Campground, Montana RV Park
- —boat hire and water-sport clubs
- 1marinas and slipways
- —ferry piers
- 3viewpoints
Carcross Desert, Lake Bennett Viewpoint, Bove Island Viewpoint
- 1hotels, B&Bs and chalets
Caribou Hotel
- —fishing spots
- 5restaurants and cafés
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Whitehorse / Erik Nielsen International Airport (YXY), 72 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 | -12.4 | -10.2 | -7.0 | -0.4 | 7.5 | 12.8 | 14.7 | 13.0 | 7.4 | -0.1 | -9.7 | -12.2 |
| 2020 | −4.3 | +1.3 | −0.5 | −0.1 | +1.8 | −1.8 | −1.2 | −1.8 | +0.7 | −0.7 | −1.9 | +3.4 |
| 2021 | +1.8 | −5.1 | +0.3 | −0.9 | −2.6 | +0.9 | +0.6 | −0.6 | −0.7 | −1.2 | +0.4 | −3.5 |
| 2022 | +0.3 | +3.4 | +3.2 | −1.9 | −1.9 | +2.3 | −0.3 | +0.7 | +1.4 | +3.2 | +0.1 | −3.1 |
| 2023 | +4.7 | −0.1 | −0.6 | −0.3 | +0.2 | +0.2 | +3.0 | +2.7 | +0.2 | +1.6 | +4.6 | +5.0 |
| 2024 | −1.8 | ±0.0 | +3.0 | +0.9 | −1.5 | +1.6 | −0.3 | +0.9 | −0.4 | −1.6 | −1.7 | +2.1 |
| 2025 | +3.7 | −0.6 | +3.0 | +1.2 | −3.1 | −0.6 | +0.7 | +1.6 | +2.6 | +1.7 | +2.6 | −10.6 |
+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 (Q1290306) · 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.
