The Elizabeth Lake plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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5.11 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1909. The next wettest, 3.62 inches, fell in 1944.
Elizabeth Lake’s center stands about 3,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,640 ft to 4,370 ft, a difference of 1,730 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Burnt Peak, about 5,780 ft, 11 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Plio-Pleistocene and Pliocene loosely consolidated deposits (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Eocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 48 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
Elizabeth Lake has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in August; winter nights fall to about 37° in December. About 16 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Elizabeth Lake normally reaches 65° and falls to 44°. The record high is 80°, in 2019; the record low 29°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 at Fairmont, 4 miles northwest, 320 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
