Waters and hydrographic features

Whitefish Bay

Whitefish Bay: the large southeastern bay of Lake Superior between Michigan and Ontario, outlet to the St. Mary's River, notorious for shipwrecks including the Edmund Fitzgerald; also a Wisconsin village and other namesakes.

Whitefish Lake

Whitefish Lake is a 3,328-acre oligotrophic lake in Flathead County, Montana, beside the town of Whitefish; distinct from Minnesota's Whitefish Chain lake. Seven miles long, city water supply, monitored by the Whitefish Lake Institute since 2007.

Wholdaia

Wholdaia Lake, also called Daly Lake, is a 678 km² glacial lake in the Northwest Territories, Canada, at 364 m elevation, source of the Dubawnt River and site of Geological Survey of Canada surficial and bedrock mapping.

Wild Atlantic Way

Wild Atlantic Way: 2,500 km signposted coastal touring route on Ireland's west coast from Donegal to Kinsale, launched by Fáilte Ireland in 2014; 180 Discovery Points, about €3 billion annual revenue and 35,000 jobs.

Wildlife of the Maldives

Wildlife of the Maldives: plants and animals of the 1,192-island Indian Ocean archipelago; 250+ coral and 1,100+ fish species, whale sharks, manta rays, endemic birds and fish, and reefs threatened by recurrent bleaching.

Wilhelmina Bay

Wilhelmina Bay is a bay on the Danco Coast of the west Antarctic Peninsula, about 15 miles wide, known for humpback whales feeding on krill each autumn.

Wilkins Sound

Wilkins Sound is a sound in the Bellingshausen Sea off the Antarctic Peninsula, between Alexander, Charcot, Latady, and Rothschild islands, named 1961 for explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins and largely filled by the retreating Wilkins Ice Shelf.

William J. Mitsch

William J. Mitsch (1947–2025), American wetland ecologist and ecological engineer; founder of the Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, journal Ecological Engineering, and the Wetlands textbook; 2004 Stockholm Water Prize co-laureate.

Windermere

Windermere (Lake Windermere) is England's largest natural lake, a glacial twin-basin lake in the Lake District, Cumbria; 14.8 km², 64 m deep, famed for scenery, Arctic charr, and ongoing sewage and nutrient pollution disputes.

Winisk (lake)

Winisk Lake (Lac Winisk, formerly Weibikwei Lake) is a shallow lake in Kenora District, Ontario, on the upper Winisk River, home to Webequie First Nation on Eastwood Island and the site of the former HBC Fort Weenisk.

Winnebago

Lake Winnebago is a large, shallow freshwater lake in east-central Wisconsin, the largest inland lake entirely within the state, known for its lake sturgeon and February spearing season.

Winnipegosis

Lake Winnipegosis ("Little Muddy Water") is a large glacial lake in Manitoba, about 200 km long and 5,370 km², draining to Lake Manitoba; fished commercially since the 1890s, with walleye collapse in the 1960s and zebra mussels detected in 2026.

Wiyâshâkimî

Wiyâshâkimî (Lac Wiyâshâkimî, formerly Lac à l'Eau Claire, Clearwater Lakes) is a double impact-crater lake in Tursujuq National Park, northern Québec, formed by two impacts about 180 million years apart, with a 1,243 km² oligotrophic freshwater surface.

Wolf River (Tennessee)

Wolf River (Tennessee): ~100-mile Mississippi River tributary rising at Baker's Pond, Mississippi, flowing through Fayette and Shelby counties to Memphis; lower 22 miles channelized in 1964; wetlands recharge the Memphis Sand Aquifer; distinct from Mississippi's Gulf Coast Wolf River.

Wollaston

Wollaston Lake, Saskatchewan's largest entirely in-province lake (2,681 sq km), a bifurcation lake draining 90% to Hudson Bay via the Cochrane River and 10% to the Mackenzie via the Fond du Lac River; named by Peter Fidler in 1807.

Woodlark Basin

Woodlark Basin: small ~500-km ocean basin between Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands where seafloor spreading began ~6 Ma and propagates westward at ~14 cm/yr into continental crust while its eastern end subducts beneath the Solomon arc.

World's tallest waterfalls

The world's tallest waterfalls are ranked by total height and by tallest single drop; Angel Falls in Venezuela holds both records, with Tugela Falls in South Africa as challenger.

Wouri Estuary

The Wouri Estuary is a large mangrove-fringed estuary on Cameroon's Atlantic coast, where the Wouri River discharges near Douala and hosts the country's largest port.

Wright Inlet

Wright Inlet, also called Wright, ensenada, is an ice-filled inlet on the Lassiter Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctica, between Cape Wheeler and Cape Little, photographed in 1940 and subject to episodic ice-tongue loss.

Wu

Wu (乌江, Wujiang, Wu River), largest right-bank tributary of the upper Yangtze: 1,037 km, 2,124 m drop, karst basin of 87,920 km2, an 11-dam hydropower cascade totaling 8,665 MW in Guizhou.

Wujia

Wujia River (乌加河), also Wujiahe, is an abandoned former channel of the Yellow River in Inner Mongolia's Hetao Plain that silted around 1850 and now serves as the main drainage channel of the Hetao Irrigation District, feeding Wuliangsuhai Lake.

Wular Lake

Wular Lake, a large freshwater lake in Kashmir, India, fed by the Jhelum River; a Ramsar site since 1990, major fishery and flood buffer, now heavily shrunk and under restoration by WUCMA.

WWT wetland centres and reserves

The WWT wetland centers are ten visitor reserves in the UK run by the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, begun by Peter Scott at Slimbridge in 1946.

Wynniatt Bay

Wynniatt Bay, a bay on northwestern Victoria Island, Northwest Territories, Canada (72°45′N 111°00′W, NTS 078B13). Named for Robert Wynniatt, who reached it in 1851 during McClure's Investigator expedition; official since 1947.

Xiang

The Xiang River, also called Xiangjiang (湘江), is a major Yangtze tributary flowing about 844 km north through Hunan into Dongting Lake, and is Hunan's namesake abbreviation.

Oct 22, 2026

Xiao and Xiang Rivers

The Xiao and Xiang Rivers (潇湘), in Hunan Province, China, both flow into Dongting Lake; their name, Xiaoxiang, became a classic subject of Chinese landscape painting.

Xingu (landform)

Xingu River (Rio Xingu), a ~1,800 km clearwater Amazon tributary rising in Mato Grosso, with mean discharge 9,700 m3/s, the Volta Grande rapids, indigenous territories, and the Belo Monte dam (11,233 MW).

Xixi National Wetland Park (西溪国家湿地公园)

Xixi National Wetland Park (西溪国家湿地公园) in western Hangzhou is China's first national wetland park, opened May 1, 2005, a Ramsar site since 2009 combining urban, agricultural, and cultural wetlands.

Yaghistan

Yaghistan is FEOW freshwater ecoregion 704, a Palearctic montane freshwaters unit in Afghanistan and Pakistan covering the upper and middle Zhob and Kabul River basins, draining to the Arabian Sea, with three endemic Schistura fish species.