River
Yobe River
1,200 km from source to mouth · Nigeria and Niger.
Nigeria and NigerFlows into Lake Chad3rd longest in Nigeria
In numbers
Length
1,200km
Average flow
15m³/s
Basin
148,000km²
Drop
841m
from 1,117 m to 276 m
Countries
2
The journey
From source to mouth
1,200 km of river and 12 stops on the way: 12 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSourceat 1,117 m
- 0 kmJos1,040,000 people
- 305 kmGwaram15,806 people
- 499 kmKatagum10,602 people
- 583 kmGorgoram12,470 people
- 655 kmGashua125,817 people
- 805 kmGeidam41,367 people
- 932 kmDamasak13,874 people
- 935 kmChétimari65,449 people
- 974 kmDiffa56,437 people
- 1,026 kmGueskérou37,836 people
- 1,108 kmAbadam1,503 people
- 1,122 kmBosso65,022 people
- 1,200 kmLake Chadat 276 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Niger and Nigeria
At the mouth it carries 15 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 167 seconds. It drops from 1,117 m to 276 m, 0.7 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 148,000 km², about the size of BD. 25.2 million people live in it. Highest water: from August to September; lowest: from January to April. It is heavily dammed: reservoirs can hold 100% of a year's flow.
Where to start
- JosLargest city on its banks · 1,040,000 people
- Yakubu Gowon Airport (JOS)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 32 km from the cityCar hire at ABV airport (Abuja)Discover Cars · Affiliate link↗
- From November to FebruaryThe best months to visit
Yobe River, month by month
Highest water: from August to September
Lowest water: from January to April. Best months to visit: from November to February.
From about 0.0 m³/s in the lowest month to 100 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
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The basin
Yobe River: the basin in numbers
213,452 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 25.2millionpeople live in the basin
- 118/km²people per km²
- 417maverage altitude of the basin
- 456mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 26.8°Caverage air temperature
- 8%protected areas
- 0.5%covered by lakes
- 3.5km³held in reservoirs
What covers the basin
- 48% Cropland
- 17% Pasture
- 4% Towns and cities
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
Yobe River: what you find on the way
- 36Weirs
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.6 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
Yobe River in pictures




Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
Tributaries (2)
Also: Komadugu Gana River, Ngalda River
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q1199792) · 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.