Lake Nyos Cameroon - The Killer Lake.

Where is Cameroon 's Lake Nyos Located?

Lake Nyos is located in the North west province of Cameroon, off the dirt road of Wum.

Some 31 miles from Cameroon's border with Nigeria and 200 miles from Yaounde - the Capital of Cameroon.

The lake is surrounded by the villages of Cha, Nyos , Munji, Djingbe and Subum and is drained by a stream northward to Benue River basin in Nigeria.

Lake Nyos Cameroon, which is 680 ft deep with a surface area of 390 acres lies in the Oku Volcanic Field (inactive) along the Cameroon line of volcanic activity.

Why so popular?

Lake Nyos is one (1) of three(3) Killer lakes in the modern world - Lake Monoun Cameroon (62 miles from Lake Nyos) and Lake Kivu on the boarder of Rwanda and Congo-Kinshasa.

These lakes carry a high concentration of dissolved gas due to their inability to periodically turn over as due other lakes.

Both lakes Monoun and Nyos have already release gases killer 37 (August 15, 1984) and 1,700 (August 21, 1986) people respectively.

In Lakes Nyos disaster (August 21, 1986) every living thing with 15 miles radius of the lake was killed - 1700 people and over 3,500 animals.

The cause of the sudden release is believed to be due to a possible landslide on the lakes.

Future of the lake

Presently the region is being inhabited by both returning settlers and newcomers due to the ancestral value and rich agricultural value of the volcanic soil.


High levels of dissolved gases has been detected building up in the lake Nyos recently. In 2001, a French-Cameroon science team successfully carried out a degassing of the lake.

Read more about their work here.


Sources and credit to:

Read more about Lake Nyos here.
Read more about Lake Nyos here.

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