The Dunnellon 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.
92° on Nov. 17, 1988, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 91° in 1921.
Dunnellon’s center stands about 80 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 30 ft to 130 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undifferentiated sediments (sand, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Late Eocene, 34 to 38 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Dunnellon reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rainbow and the Withlacoochee: about 25 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Rousseau.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dunnellon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dunnellon has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 43° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Dunnellon normally reaches 77° and falls to 52°. The record high is 88°, in 2008; the record low 32°, in 1984. The most rain on this date, 3.43 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Inverness 3 SE, 19 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.