Nibi Metrics
Real-time water levels, forecasts, and alerts for lakes and rivers across Canada and the US. Built on official government data.
Nibi Metrics turns raw gauge readings from official hydrometric networks into something a person standing on a dock can actually use: is the water high or low for today, which way is it moving, and how unusual is this? This page explains where every number on the platform comes from and what we do to it along the way.
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Lake Scugog Water Level
Live lake level, flow, historical records and forecast for Lake Scugog in Durham, ON, Canada, built from official government gauge data.
- Location Durham, ON, Canada
- Watershed scugog
- Primary gauge 02HG006 (Water Survey of Canada)
About Lake Scugog
Lake Scugog — the shallow, productive heart of the southern Kawarthas
Lake Scugog occupies a unique place in Ontario's lake geography: it is among the largest entirely man-made lakes in the province, the result of a single 1834 milling dam that flooded a marshy river valley and created the open water we see today. With a surface area of roughly 67 square kilometres but an average depth of only about 3 metres, Scugog is the shallowest large lake within an hour's drive of Toronto — and that shallowness shapes everything about it.
The lake sits in Durham Region, with the town of Port Perry anchoring its western shore and Scugog Island sitting near its centre. Water drains north through the Scugog River into Sturgeon Lake and the broader Kawartha chain, all part of the Trent-Severn Waterway connecting Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay.
A name from the water itself
The lake takes its name from the Anishinaabe (Mississauga Ojibwe) word Scugog, traditionally translated as "submerged or flooded land" — a name that proved prescient when European settlement transformed the original marshy basin into the open lake of today. The same nibi (water) tradition that connects all of Ontario's Anishinaabe lake names runs through here.
The Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation maintain their community on Scugog Island, the largest island in the lake. Their presence on this land long predates settler arrival, and their relationship with the watershed continues to inform conservation and stewardship work across the region.
A lake reshaped by a dam
The defining moment in Lake Scugog's modern history came in 1834, when miller William Purdy built a dam on the Scugog River at Lindsay, downstream of the lake. The dam was designed to power his grist mill — but it raised the upstream water level by roughly two metres, flooding farmland, drowning timber, and creating the modern Lake Scugog from what had been a smaller, marsh-dominated waterway.
The flooding was deeply controversial at the time. Settlers whose land disappeared underwater opposed Purdy bitterly, and the dispute eventually drove Purdy out of the area. But the dam stayed, the lake remained, and by the late 1800s Lake Scugog had become a working part of the Trent-Severn Waterway, with steam-powered shipping moving lumber, grain, and passengers between Port Perry and the broader Kawartha system.
Today's water levels on Scugog are still regulated by Parks Canada through the Trent-Severn lock and dam system — but the basic geography of the lake remains a direct legacy of Purdy's 1834 dam.
Ecology and water character
Lake Scugog is eutrophic to mesotrophic — nutrient-rich, warm, and highly productive. The shallow average depth means the entire water column warms quickly in summer and supports a vigorous warm-water fishery. Largemouth and smallmouth bass, walleye, muskellunge, northern pike, crappie, and yellow perch are all well established, making Scugog one of the most popular bass fishing destinations in southern Ontario.
That same productivity has a downside: in hot, calm summers the lake is prone to blue-green algae blooms, particularly in shallow back bays. The Lake Scugog Enhancement Project and Kawartha Conservation monitor water quality closely, and shoreline development standards reflect ongoing concern about nutrient loading from surrounding agricultural lands.
Why the data matters here
For Lake Scugog, levels matter for three distinct constituencies. Cottage owners and dock users care about summer drawdown, particularly given the lake's shallow profile — small level changes have outsized effects on shoreline accessibility. Anglers and ice fishermen watch for the transition windows in spring and fall, since the lake's productive fishery is tied closely to seasonal timing. Trent-Severn navigators depend on Parks Canada's lock-level management throughout the boating season.
The hero number on this page compares today's reading against the median for this same calendar day across the historical record — the cleanest single signal of whether the lake is running normal, high, or low for this time of year.
How this page is built
Readings come from official government gauges and are rolled into daily records: the daily mean, high and low for every day on record. Each calendar day gets its own baseline from the full history, so the level you see is compared against what this specific date usually looks like rather than an annual average.
How Nibi Metrics works · Water stories
