River
Uba River
278 km from source to mouth · Kazakhstan.
KazakhstanFlows into Irtysh
In numbers
Length
278km
Average flow
180m³/s
Basin
9,850km²
Drop
478m
from 715 m to 237 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
278 km of river and 2 stops on the way: 2 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 715 m
- 215 kmShemonaikha20,087 people
- 225 kmŪst’-Talovka6,122 people
- 278 kmIrtyshat 237 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in the Kazakhstan
At the mouth it carries 178 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 14 seconds. It drops from 715 m to 237 m, 1.7 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 9,850 km², about the size of LB. 111,000 people live in it. Highest water, with the snowmelt: from April to June; lowest: from December to March. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- ShemonaikhaLargest city on its banks · 20,087 people
- Oskemen International Airport (UKK)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 78 km from the cityCar hire at NQZ airport (Astana)Discover Cars · Affiliate link↗
- Kayak and canoe4 put-ins and rapids mapped (OpenStreetMap)
- From June to AugustThe best months to visit
Uba River, month by month
Highest water: from April to June
Lowest water: from December to March. Freezing months (average below −4 °C): from November to March. Melting snow makes up much of its water. Best months to visit: from June to August.
From about 6.7 m³/s in the lowest month to 340 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
Uba River: the basin in numbers
9,896 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 111,000people live in the basin
- 11/km²people per km²
- 792maverage altitude of the basin
- 595mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 1.2°Caverage air temperature
- 5%protected areas
- 7%permafrost
What covers the basin
- 55% Forest
- 6% Cropland
- 16% 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
Uba River: what you find on the way
- 1Weirs
- 4Rapids
- 1River beaches
From OpenStreetMap, within 1.8 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
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
Uba River in pictures

Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
IrtyshWhere these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q2589600) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed from the source to the mouth 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 |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.