Reservoir
Williston Lake
Natural Earth’s outline of Williston Lake measures about 1,660 km² (640 mi²), the 67th largest of the 104 lakes on sizeversus, and about the same size as the Comoros.
50 km
- Comoros
- Williston Lake
The numbers
- 1,660km²Area, measured640 mi² · Natural Earth outline
- 1,760km²Area, publishedWikidata · 5.9% above our measure, flagged
- 166mGreatest depthaverage about 42.4 m
- 70.3km³VolumeWikidata
- 671mAbove sea levelSurface, Wikidata
The area is measured from the outline drawn above, on the WGS84 ellipsoid; the published figure is shown beside it, and a water body is kept only if the two are within 10%. This one is between 5% and 10% apart, so it is flagged and no comparison is built for it automatically.
What the numbers say about Williston Lake
- The Caspian Sea (called a sea or a lake, depending on the definition), the largest of the 104 lakes ranked on sizeversus, is 229× the size of Williston Lake; Williston Lake ranks 67th.
- Williston Lake sits between Lake Kyoga (1,730 km²) and Siling Lake (1,580 km²) in the ranking.
- It is a reservoir, made by a dam, and the 8th largest of the 14 reservoirs in this ranking.
- Counted as a country, Williston Lake would be larger than 35 of the 212 countries listed on sizeversus and would rank 178th by area, between the Comoros (1,670 km²) and São Tomé and Príncipe (1,040 km²).
- It is larger than 1 of the 51 US states and districts (the biggest of them is Washington, D.C., 162 km²) and smaller than 50.
- It is smaller than every one of the 31 provinces and regions of China.
- The closest US state is Rhode Island (2,830 km²): Williston Lake is 59% of the size of Rhode Island.
- Wikidata records a greatest depth of 166 m; with its volume that gives an average depth of about 42 m.
- Wikidata records a volume of 70 km³. Poured over the Comoros (1,670 km²), that water would stand 42 m deep.
- Its surface lies about 671 m above sea level (Wikidata).
- On a standard web map (Web Mercator), a place at 56°N is drawn about 3.2× too large in area, so Williston Lake looks bigger there than it is.
- Laid out flat, Williston Lake stretches about 178 km north to south and 165 km east to west.
- Our measured 1,660 km² is 5.9% below Wikidata’s published figure of 1,760 km². This difference is flagged for review: a lake’s outline may include islands or bays that the published figure leaves out, or the water level may differ. The outline is kept because it is within 10%, and this page is not matched automatically to any other.
About the same size as
Countries
US states
On the shore
Natural Earth’s outlines of Canada contain or lie within 4 km of the outline of Williston Lake. That is what its geometry says, and it is not a statement about who owns the water or where any border runs in it.
Names
- Williston Lakethe name in this page’s titlesource: Wikidata’s English label
- Willistonalso calledsource: Natural Earth
Where Williston Lake ranks
Williston Lake is the 67th largest of the 104 lakes on sizeversus, ranked by measured area.
Share this outline
Sources and method
- Outline
- Natural Earth, 1:10m Lakes + Reservoirs, public domain (Lakes + Reservoirs). Outlines of lakes are drawn at 1:10 million.
- Boundary
- A lake or a sea has no legal boundary of its own. The outline is a cartographic one, and the page says so by showing the measured area beside the published one.
- Area basis
- Measured outline: computed on the WGS84 ellipsoid from the full-detail outline and shown rounded. Published figure: Wikidata (CC0), fetched 2026-11-11. An outline is kept within 10% of the published figure and matched to other places automatically within 5%.
- Depth, volume, height
- As recorded in Wikidata; a volume that cannot be right for the area and depth is left out.
- Shore
- Countries whose Natural Earth outline contains or comes close to the water's outline; computed, not a statement of ownership.
- Drawing
- Each outline is projected with an equal-area projection centred on its own centroid, so areas stay true and two can be laid over each other.
- Data built
- 2026-11-11