Lake Pátzcuaro (Spanish: Lago de Pátzcuaro) is a lake in the municipality of Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, Mexico.
The natives believe that the lake is the place where the barrier between life and death is the thinnest.
Lake Pátzcuaro lies in an endorheic basin, which does not drain to the sea. A watershed area of 929 square kilometers drains into the lake, of which 126.4 are the water body. The Lake Pátzcuaro watershed extends 50 kilometers east-west and 33 kilometers from north to south. Lake Patzcuaro lies at an elevation of 1,920 meters, and is the center of the basin and is surrounded by volcanic mountains with very steep slopes. It has an average depth of 5 meters and a maximum of 11. Its volume is approximately 580 million cubic meters.
The Lake Pátzcuaro basin is of volcanic origin. At times it has been part of an open and continuous hydrological system formed by Lake Cuitzeo, Pátzcuaro and Lake Zirahuén, which drained into the Lerma River. Today, like lakes Cuitzeo and Zirahuén, it is a closed basin, although ecologists consider it a sub-basin of the Lerma-Chapala basin.
Read more about Lake Pátzcuaro: Wetlands, Watershed, History, Islands in The Lake, Major Towns Along The Lake Shore, Minor Towns Along The Lake Shore, Nearby Areas
Famous quotes containing the word lake:
“What a wilderness walk for a man to take alone! None of your half-mile swamps, none of your mile-wide woods merely, as on the skirts of our towns, without hotels, only a dark mountain or a lake for guide-board and station, over ground much of it impassable in summer!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)