A typical lake in Finland

I once heard in a pub quiz that the average depth of Finnish lakes is 7 metres. But I think that most lakes have never had their depth measured - and certainly not in the detail that I would want. So I decided to make my own measurements (using string, GPS and a boat) of a lake I spend a lot of time on. The original data comprised 121 depth measurements; the coastline was later refined using google maps.

The axes are just distances in metres (north upwards), and the depth is on the colourscale in metres.

Lakes in Finland

• In Finland there are over 180,000 lakes, pools, ponds of at least 500 square metres in surface area. 
• On a lake database (jarviwiki.fi) are included all lakes of at least 1 hectare in size (i.e. 100x100 metres is 10,000 square metres).
• There are lots of small lakes, and not so many bigs ones - following a power-law relationship, see chart below.

Bags in the Finnish language...

Flight times

I recently came across these that I made last Christmas. It's one way to pass time in an airport...

Kävelytunnelit Helsingin keskustassa

When weather is against us, it can be nice to use some of Helsinki's tunnels to walk from place to place. But it can be hard to navigate underground. So I made a map of some key underground and covered walkways in Helsinki city centre.

Naturally there are simplifications to keep the map readable. But I'd be happy to hear about any key things to add to or remove from the map. I assume I'll make another version...

English speakers in Europe

Overall no big surprise: more English-language speakers in north and west Europe. I was surprised how 'low' Finland was. But I am perhaps biased by living in Helsinki!

Data source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population

Sunshine in UK and Finland

• Not only is there less daylight, but also it is much more cloudy in winter. Thus sunny less than 20% of the time!
• The spring and summer is quite nice though - sunshine around 50% of the time.
• For comparison, the south cost of Spain has around 60-70% of sunshine (most in summer).

Data sources: http://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/climate, http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate