The Twin Lakes 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy; warmer
Showers likely
Mostly sunny; cooler
Chance of showers
Showers likely
65° on Nov. 16, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 63° in 2016.
Twin Lakes’s center stands about 9,610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 9,090 ft to 10,130 ft, a difference of 1,040 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Elbert, about 14,370 ft, 7 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial drift (unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite, granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian to Carboniferous, 324 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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. 3 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.
A raindrop that lands in Twin Lakes reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 2,010 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
1,120 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Twin Lakes; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Twin Lakes has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 74° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. About 10 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Twin Lakes normally reaches 43° and falls to 17°. The record high is 62°, in 1999; the record low 1°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.18 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Twin Lakes Reservoir, here, 370 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
