Geography
 Skaneateles Lake, located in the Oswego River Drainage basin, is the fourth largest of the Finger Lakes. The lake was formed in the Pleistocene Era by the advance of the continental glacier and, like other Finger Lakes, is long and very thin in shape.
The land area surrounding Skaneateles Lake that drains into the lake is approximately 59.3 sq. miles. A large portion of the watershed is steeply sloped, and the highest point of elevation is 1,980 ft. which occurs at the southeast end of the lake. The watershed is comprised of portions of one village and seven towns within three counties: Onondaga, Cayuga, and Cortland.
While the land area around the lake is 59.3 sq. miles, the lake surface area is 13.6 sq. miles. This makes the land to surface water ratio 4.36 sq. miles of watershed land per 1.0 sq. mile of lake surface. This is a significant fact. A neighboring lake, Owasco, has a land to water ratio of 19.34 sq. miles to 1.0 sq. mile. This in effect means that there is much more land area that drains into Owasco Lake, and much more potential for pollutants to end up in the streams and tributaries that empty into Owasco Lake. Skaneateles Lake, on the other hand, has historically been classified as an oligotrophic lake (or lacking in nutrients). This may in part be due to the fact that there is less land area that can potentially contribute pollutants, and excess nutrients to the lake.
The lake has a mean elevation of 863.27 feet above sea level (City of Syracuse Datum) (Syracuse Datum=865.02 National Geodetic Vertical Datum), a length of 16 miles, and average width of three quarters of a mile, and a maximum depth of 300 ft.
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