Loch Ness is part of the Great Glen or Glen Mor in
Gaelic, a scar like fault line which runs over 60 miles from Inverness
in the north to Fort William in the south. It is made up of 3 lochs,
Loch Lochy, Loch Oich and Loch Ness, with Loch Ness being by far the
largest.
The loch is a tectonic lake resulting from a movement in
the earths crust. Around 500 million years ago tremors opened up the
crack that is now Loch Ness as the land to the north moved around 65
miles south westerly.
During the last ice age, which ended about 10
to 12 thousand years ago, the whole area was covered in 4 thousand feet
of ice. In fact the only land mark would have been Ben Nevis to the
south. It was this ice which gouged out the trough that loch ness lies
in. Tremors can still be felt around the loch, the last one in December
1997. The hills surrounding the loch are still rising by 1mm per year.
Facts about Loch Ness
(1) Loch Ness is the largest body of fresh water in Britain. There is more water in Loch Ness than all the other lakes in England, Scotland and Wales put together.
(2)
It is around twenty two and a half miles long and between one and one
and a half miles wide with a depth of 754 feet with the bottom of the loch
being as flat as a bowling green.
(3)
It holds 263 thousand million cubic feet of water, which is around 16
million 430 thousand million gallons of water with a surface area of
14000 acres and could hold the population of the world 10 times over.
(4)
It is fed by 7 major rivers the Oich, Tarff, Enrich, Coiltie, Moriston,
Foyers and Farigaig plus numerous burns, with only one outlet the River
Ness which flows 7 miles through Inverness into the Moray Firth 52 feet
below the loch surface.
(5) During a heavy rainfall the lochs level has been known to rise by as much as 7 feet and a rise of 2 feet is common place.
(6)
The rain catchment area for Loch Ness is so large that a rainfall of
just quarter of an inch adds 11.000.000 tons of water to the loch.
(7) It is said that the loch never freezes and this is true.
(8)
Because of the great amount of water in the loch a thermocline lies at
around 100 feet down in the loch.The top 100 feet of water alters
temperature depending on the weather conditions but below the
thermocline the temperature never alters from 44 degrees Fahrenheit. So
as the surface water cools in winter and nears freezing point it sinks
and is replaced by the warmer water from below. This can cause the loch
to steam on very cold days, in fact it has been estimated that the heat
given off by the loch in a winter is the equivalent to burning 2
million tons of coal.
