The Clear 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 cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 72° in 2022.
Clear Lake’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
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.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 11 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 Clear Lake reaches Lake Erie by way of the West Fork West Branch Saint Joseph, the West Branch Saint Joseph, the Saint Joseph and the Maumee: about 250 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
140 miles of the trip are on the Maumee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clear Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clear Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Clear Lake normally reaches 48° and falls to 31°. The record high is 71°, in 1902; the record low 7°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.41 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Angola, 11 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
