River
Gail
122 km from source to mouth · Austria.
AustriaFlows into Drava6th longest in Austria
In numbers
Length
122km
Average flow
45m³/s
Basin
1,414km²
Drop
715m
from 1,203 m to 488 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
122 km of river and 12 stops on the way: 10 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmObertilliachat 1,203 m
- 32 kmKötschach1,498 people
- 70 kmHermagor1,535 people
- 70 kmGösseringtributary
- 80 kmPressegger See0.5 km²
- 103 kmGailitz1,072 people
- 113 kmFürnitz1,520 people
- 119 kmAuen6,563 people
- 120 kmSt. Agathen und Perau3,230 people
- 120 kmVillach58,882 people
- 122 kmSeebach3,938 people
- 122 kmSankt Magdalen1,358 people
- 122 kmLandskron4,304 people
- 122 kmDravaat 488 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Austria
At the mouth it carries 45 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 55 seconds. It drops from 1,203 m to 488 m, 5.9 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 1,414 km². 56,000 people live in it. Highest water: March; lowest: from December to February. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- VillachLargest city on its banks · 58,882 people
- Klagenfurt Airport (KLU)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 37 km from the cityCar hire at KLU airport (Klagenfurt am Wörthersee)Discover Cars · Affiliate link↗
- Kayak and canoe1 put-ins and rapids mapped (OpenStreetMap)
- From June to SeptemberThe best months to visit
Gail, month by month
Highest water: March
Lowest water: from December to February. Best months to visit: from June to September.
From about 10 m³/s in the lowest month to 81 m³/s in the highest. An estimate: the monthly flow is modelled from the lowest and highest months of WaterGAP (RiverATLAS, 1971–2000) and the rain and snow along the river (WorldClim). Dams change the real rhythm. The chip is the average air temperature; below it, the month's rain.
Plan the trip
Plan the trip: boat trips, a bed by the river, a car
Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.
The basin
Gail: the basin in numbers
1,382 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 56,000people live in the basin
- 40/km²people per km²
- 1,227maverage altitude of the basin
- 1,222mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 5.2°Caverage air temperature
- 6%protected areas
- 0.2%covered by lakes
What covers the basin
- 91% Forest
- 5% Cropland
- 14% Pasture
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Along the river
Gail: what you find on the way
- 21Weirs
- 1Locks
- 10WaterfallsNölblinger Wasserfall, Studencafall and 8 more
- 1Canoe put-ins
From OpenStreetMap, within 1.3 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Gail in our other atlases
What our sister atlases know about the waterfalls on this river, the lakes it flows through, the beaches at its mouth, the mountains where it rises and the islands off its mouth.
1lake on its wayLakeyas
79mountains at the sourcePeakyas
Lakes and reservoirs (1)
Lakes it flows through, by Lakeyas
- Pressegger Seekm 76 · 14 m deep0.5km²
Lakeyas is coming soonOpen Lakeyas ↗
Mountains at the source (79)
Within 15 km of the source, by Peakyas
- Peralba8.6 km away · prominence 725 m2,694m
- Große Sandspitze12 km away2,770m
- Monte Cavallino12 km away · prominence 594 m2,689m
- Spitzkofel9.2 km away2,717m
- Rosskopf14 km away2,603m
- Wilde Sender12 km away2,738m
- Laserzkopf13 km away2,719m
- Laserzwand12 km away2,614m
71 more on PeakyasOpen Peakyas ↗
From space
The source and the mouth, seen from orbit
Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. The glowing line is the river as drawn by RiverATLAS.
Photos
Gail in pictures
Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
Drava
Croatia720 km620 m³/sTributaries (7)
Also: Slizza, Gössering, Stranigbach, Valentinbach, Wolayer Bach, Nötschbach, Assnitzbach
Romania
Serbia
Germany
MoldovaNearby
Rivers nearby
Slovenia
ItalyWhere these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q876978) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed along the river network from the point given by Wikidata |
| Flow | WaterGAP (RiverATLAS), 1971–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate along the river | WorldClim (RiverATLAS), 1970–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Towns, bridges, dams | Wikidata · CC0; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0 |
| Along the river | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
| Our other atlases | Lakeyas, Peakyas — Wikidata · CC0; © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0; HydroLAKES · CC BY 4.0; NOAA OISST |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
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