Cats, Kids and Crafts: Visit Oklahoma Lakes

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Visit Oklahoma Lakes

2014 would be a great time to visit some of the lakes in the State of Oklahoma...fishing, boating, swimming, or just relaxing on the shoreline...Oklahoma has more miles of shoreline that any of the other continuous 48 states. Who would have thought that this prairie state would have so many lakes?

Oklahoma has approximately 55,646 miles of shoreline along lakes and ponds.*

Oklahoma contains approximately 1,401 square miles of water area in its lakes and ponds (larger than the state of Rhode Island).*

Oklahoma has approximately 167,600 miles of rivers/streams.*

Oklahoma's longest river is the Beaver/North Canadian River (752 miles); the Red River is the second longest (570 miles).*

Oklahoma's largest lake in surface area is Eufaula (105,000 acres); Lake Texoma is second (88,000 acres). The state's largest lake in conservation storage is Texoma (2.6 million acre-feet of water); Eufaula is second (2.3 million acre-feet).

Average annual lake evaporation in Oklahoma ranges from 48 inches in the extreme east to 65 inches in the southwest, numbers that far exceed the average yearly rainfall in those areas.

56% of all water used in the state is from surface water.

*based on USGS 1:24,000 scale

Having that many miles of shoreline is amazing when you read the following facts about the State of Oklahoma:
Situated in the western south-central United States, Oklahoma ranks 18th in size among the 50 states.
The total area of Oklahoma is 69,956 sq mi (181,186 sq km), of which land takes up 68,655 sq mi (177,817 sq km) and inland water 1,301 sq mi (3,369 sq km). Oklahoma extends 464 mi (747 km) e-w including the panhandle in the nw, which is about 165 mi (266 km) long. The maximum n-s extension is 230 mi (370 km).
Oklahoma is bordered on the north by Colorado and Kansas; on the east by Missouri and Arkansas; on the south and south wwest by Texas (with part of the line formed by the Red River); and on the extreme west by New Mexico. The total estimated boundary length of Oklahoma is 1,581 mi (2,544 km). The state's geographic center is in Oklahoma County, 8 mi (13 km) n of Oklahoma City.