The Third 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
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Partly cloudy
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78° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 74° in 2020.
Third Lake’s center stands about 760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 830 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gander Mountain, about 960 ft, 13 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian System undivided (dolostone, limestone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old.
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.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 22 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 Third Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mill Creek, the Des Plaines, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,580 river miles.
Lake on the way: Peoria Lake.
1,190 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Third Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Third Lake has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 34 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Third Lake normally reaches 49° and falls to 30°. The record high is 70°, in 1999; the record low 10°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.59 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Mchenry Stratton Lock/Dam, 13 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
