The Punta Gorda 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
92° on Nov. 12, 2023, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1914. Next is 91° in 2024.
Punta Gorda’s center stands about 7 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 20 ft, a difference of 20 ft: nearly flat ground. Open water lies within three miles.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Shelly sediments of Plio-Pleistocene age (sand, limestone), from the Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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, limestone. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 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 Punta Gorda reaches the Gulf of America by way of North Fork Alligator Creek and Alligator Creek: about 1 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Punta Gorda; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Punta Gorda has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in August; winter nights fall to about 50° in January. About 53 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Punta Gorda normally reaches 82° and falls to 59°. The record high is 88°, in 2018; the record low 38°, in 1975. The most rain on this date, 1.70 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1914 from the Punta Gorda Area threaded record (Punta Gorda Charlotte County Airport, 5 miles east-northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
