Lake Baikal (Baikal) in Siberia, Russia is the deepest lake in the worldmeasuring 1620m deep at its deepest point. This makes it not only deep but alsothe oldest lake in the world estimated to be around 25 million years old. Atover 636 kilometers long and 80 kilometers wide this fresh water lake holdsover 20 percent of all the fresh water in the world and is second in size onlyto the Caspian Sea (the caspian is called a sea but is technically a lake).

To put things into perspective the lake is so big that if all the rivers inthe world flowed into its basin it would take almost 1 year to fill. We allknow Siberia isn’t the warmest of places so you can imagine what a phenomenalsite it is when in the winter months the lake freezes over holding ice up to115 meters thick. Now that’s a lot of ice!

ScienceFacts

Comments are closed.