The Willow Oak 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
4.24 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1948. The next wettest, 4.18 inches, fell in 1994.
Willow Oak’s center stands about 120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 80 ft to 160 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hawthorn Group, Peace River Formation, Bone Valley Member (sand, clay, phosphorite), from the Middle Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 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, phosphorite. Age: Middle Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Pliocene, 2.6 to 3.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Late Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 28 million years old. About 0.4 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 Willow Oak reaches Tampa Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Poley Creek, the North Prong Alafia and the Alafia: about 35 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Willow Oak; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Willow Oak has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 50° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Willow Oak normally reaches 80° and falls to 59°. The record high is 88°, in 2008; the record low 40°, in 1963. The most rain on this date, 1.72 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 from the Lakeland Area threaded record (Lakeland Linder Regional Airport, 6 miles north-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
