{"id":2004851,"date":"2026-06-22T17:20:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T14:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2004851"},"modified":"2026-06-22T17:20:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T14:20:21","slug":"did-you-know-500-million-gallons-of-water-evaporate-from-lake-tahoe-daily-heres-a-list-of-tahoe-fun-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2004851","title":{"rendered":"Did You Know 500 Million Gallons of Water Evaporate from Lake Tahoe Daily? | Here\u2019s a List of Tahoe \u2018Fun Facts\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo courtesy of Tahoe Fund<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Fun fact: the daily evaporation from Lake Tahoe is about half a billion gallons of water.<\/strong> This amount would meet the daily water needs of 5 million Americans, or enough to support the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

More facts about Lake Tahoe and the Tahoe Basin (courtesy of Tahoe Environmental Research Center<\/a>)\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

Q. How deep is Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. The maximum depth is 1,645 feet (501 meters), making it one of the deepest lakes in the world and second deepest lake in the United States.<\/p>\n

Q. On average, how deep is Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. The average depth is approximately 1,000 feet (305 meters).<\/p>\n

Q. What is the surface area of Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. The lake surface area is about 191 square miles (495 square kilometers).<\/p>\n

Q. What is the size of the Tahoe Watershed (also known as the Lake Tahoe Basin)<\/strong>
\nA. The watershed area is 312 square miles (800 square kilometers).<\/p>\n

Q. What is the maximum length of Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. From the north east corner to the south west corner of the lake, the maximum length is approximately 22 miles (35 kilometers).<\/p>\n

Q. What is the maximum width of Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. From the Tahoe City area on the west shore to the east shore, the maximum width is approximately 12 miles (19 kilometers).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q. How much shoreline surrounds Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. The length of lake shoreline measures approximately 75 miles (120 kilometers) and can vary based on lake level.<\/p>\n

Q. How much water is actually in Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. The Lake\u2019s volume measures in at about 39 trillion gallons, plus or minus.<\/p>\n

Q. What is the scale of Lake Tahoe\u2019s daily evaporation?<\/strong>
\nA. The daily evaporation from Lake Tahoe (half a billion gallons) would meet the daily water needs of 5 million Americans.<\/p>\n

Q. Is Lake Tahoe manmade?<\/strong>
\nA. The formation of Lake Tahoe occurred naturally over the course of 3-4 million years through faulting, volcanic activity, and glaciation. However, as a result of the dam (controlled by the federal water master) located in Tahoe City, the Lake is also a reservoir.<\/p>\n

Q. How much algae is in Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. The number of algal cells in Lake Tahoe is approximately 30 million trillion, within a few trillion or so.<\/p>\n

Q. Daphnia are unambiguous feeders that vacuum everything in its path and can potentially be an ecological solution to lake clarity in Tahoe. How much can each Daphnia eat?<\/strong>
\nA. A single Daphnia can consume 100,000 fine particles every hour.<\/p>\n

Q. How large are Daphnia and how long would it take Daphnia to clean the lake?<\/strong>
\nA. It would take a single, pin-head sized Daphnia one week to clear a gallon of Tahoe water of all fine particles.<\/p>\n

Q. Non-native Mysis shrimp were introduced into Lake Tahoe back in the 1960s and feed on the beneficial Daphnia. How many Mysis are there in the lake now?<\/strong>
\nA.\u00a0On a bad day there currently are over 60 billion Mysis shrimp in Lake Tahoe. On a good day in the future, there will be less than 15 billion Mysis shrimp, allowing the Daphnia population to rebound and help restore ecological health.<\/p>\n

Q. How many streams are there in the Basin that flow into Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. There are 63 inflowing streams, the largest being the Upper Truckee River.<\/p>\n

Q. How many streams flow out of Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. There is only one outflowing stream, the Truckee River, which exits at Tahoe City, California, flows through Truckee and Reno, and terminates in Pyramid Lake, Nevada.<\/p>\n

Q. How does the clarity of Lake Tahoe compare to other lakes?<\/strong>
\nA. Of all the large lakes worldwide, there are none with an annual clarity exceeding Tahoe\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Q. How many monitoring stations does TERC maintain in the Tahoe Basin?<\/strong>
\nA. 224.<\/p>\n

Q. If you were to drain the lake, how long would it take for it to refill?<\/strong>
\nA. It would take about 600 years to refill Tahoe.<\/p>\n

Q. What elevation level does Lake Tahoe sit at?<\/strong>
\nA. The average elevation of the lake\u2019s surface is 6,225 feet (1,897 meters).<\/p>\n

Q. What is the highest peak in basin?<\/strong>
\nA. Freel Peak is the highest, 10,891 feet (3,320 meters).<\/p>\n

Q. Where on earth is Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. Tahoe\u2019s Latitude is 39 degrees North and Longitude, 120 degrees West.<\/p>\n

Q. Is there an elephant in Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. Research divers have yet to find one.<\/p>\n

Q. Are there sharks in Lake Tahoe?<\/strong>
\nA. As one of the best sources of fresh waters in the world, Tahoe\u2019s waters do not support ocean life accustomed to much saltier water.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo courtesy of Tahoe Fund Fun fact: the daily evaporation from Lake Tahoe is about half a billion gallons of water. This amount would meet the daily water needs of 5 million Americans, or enough to support the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles. More facts about Lake Tahoe and the Tahoe Basin (courtesy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,267],"class_list":["post-2004851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-snowbrains-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2004851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2004851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2004851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2004851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}