The Sun Valley 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
79° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 78° in 1941.
Sun Valley Lake’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,040 ft to 1,220 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lansing Group (limestone, shale), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 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 58×. 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: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 315 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.
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 Sun Valley Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sand Creek, the Thompson, the Grand River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,600 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 Sun Valley Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sun Valley Lake has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Sun Valley Lake normally reaches 50° and falls to 28°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 0°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Mount Ayr, 14 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
