Lake · Sweden
Vänern
Lake in Sweden
- Area
- 5,486km²
- Max depth
- 106m
- Average depth
- 28m
- Elevation
- 44m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 2,276km
- Volume
- 153km³
Vänern is a lake in Sweden. It covers 5,486 km². On average it is 28 m deep, and 106 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 44 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
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The water
How warm is Vänern?
The water is warmest in August, around 18 °C at the surface, and coldest in March, around 0 °C. It rarely averages 20 °C, but it stays above 17 °C from July to August: brisk, refreshing swimming.
It does not normally freeze in winter.
On the shore, afternoons reach 21 °C on average in July and -2 °C in January. The driest month is March (43 mm of rain), the wettest July (116 mm).
Average surface temperature measured by the Landsat 8 satellite between 2013 and 2021 at the point furthest from the shore (180 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 | 4 | 5 | -2 | -7 | 60 | 12 | 0.3 | 12 |
| February | 2 | 3 | -1 | -6 | 48 | 11 | 1.7 | 12 |
| March | 0 | 1 | 3 | -2 | 43 | 10 | 4.9 | 14 |
| April | 2 | 4 | 10 | 4 | 47 | 10 | 6.7 | 14 |
| May | 6 | 10 | 15 | 9 | 86 | 14 | 7.8 | 15 |
| June | 13 | 16 | 19 | 14 | 106 | 16 | 9.1 | 14 |
| July | 18 | 19 | 21 | 16 | 116 | 17 | 8.0 | 14 |
| August | 18 | 19 | 20 | 15 | 109 | 18 | 6.5 | 14 |
| September | 14 | 16 | 16 | 11 | 70 | 13 | 5.0 | 16 |
| October | 10 | 12 | 9 | 5 | 82 | 14 | 2.5 | 14 |
| November | 7 | 8 | 3 | 0 | 70 | 15 | 0.7 | 13 |
| December | 6 | 6 | -1 | -5 | 61 | 14 | 0.3 | 12 |
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 9.3 years before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 48,421 km² of land.
- About 523 m³ of water flow out every second, on average.
- Its shoreline is 8.7 times longer than a circle of the same area: plenty of bays and inlets.
Around the shore
What's around Vänern
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
Towns on the shore
- Karlstad61,492 people
- Vänersborg23,119 people
- Lidköping22,988 people
- Kristinehamn18,557 people
- Mariestad16,122 people
- Skoghall13,605 people
- Åmål9,373 people
- Grums5,040 people
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Karlstad Airport (KSD), 45 km in a straight line.
Car hire at LPI airport (Linköping)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 | -2.2 | -1.1 | 3.2 | 9.6 | 14.8 | 18.6 | 20.9 | 19.8 | 15.5 | 8.9 | 3.2 | -0.8 |
| 2020 | +6.0 | +4.3 | +1.5 | +0.4 | −1.6 | +3.7 | −2.8 | +1.9 | +0.9 | +1.2 | +3.4 | +2.6 |
| 2021 | −3.0 | −2.5 | +1.5 | −1.4 | −1.6 | +2.4 | +2.5 | −1.2 | ±0.0 | +1.6 | +0.3 | −3.1 |
| 2022 | +3.0 | +2.5 | +1.5 | −1.5 | −0.5 | +1.7 | +0.1 | +2.0 | −0.5 | +2.2 | +1.9 | −2.7 |
| 2023 | +2.6 | +2.1 | −1.3 | −0.3 | +1.4 | +3.5 | −1.9 | −1.1 | +2.6 | −0.9 | −3.4 | −2.5 |
| 2024 | −2.8 | +1.4 | +1.1 | −2.1 | +4.1 | −0.4 | −1.3 | +0.2 | +1.2 | +1.7 | +1.0 | +2.3 |
| 2025 | +1.8 | +0.3 | +2.4 | +2.1 | −0.6 | −0.4 | +2.0 | −0.6 | +1.7 | +0.8 | +0.5 | +3.0 |
+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 (Q173596) · 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.
