The Lake Sarasota 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.
Mostly sunny
Sunny; warmer
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Mostly sunny
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6.67 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1911. The next wettest, 5.04 inches, fell in 1997.
Lake Sarasota’s center stands about 40 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 60 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
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 3 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.
Sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, limestone. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 28 million years old. About 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 Lake Sarasota reaches the Gulf of America by way of Philippee Creek: about 10 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Sarasota; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Sarasota has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in August; winter nights fall to about 52° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lake Sarasota normally reaches 80° and falls to 60°. The record high is 89°, in 2018; the record low 36°, in 1968. The most rain on this date, 4.80 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 from the Sarasota-Bradenton Area threaded record (Sarasota Bradenton Airport, 11 miles northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
