The Carter Lake 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.
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Showers likely
83° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 76° in 1964.
Carter Lake’s center stands about 980 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 960 ft to 1,190 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marmaton Group (shale, limestone), from the Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 55×. 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, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 315 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Carter Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,770 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Carter Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Carter Lake has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 27 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 32 inches of water.
On November 14 Carter Lake normally reaches 51° and falls to 31°. The record high is 76°, in 2025; the record low −3°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Omaha Area threaded record (Omaha Eppley Airfield, here). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
