The Lake Sumner 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
Partly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
84° on Nov. 16, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is 84° in 2025.
Lake Sumner’s center stands about 4,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,190 ft to 4,480 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mesita del Anil, about 4,920 ft, 11 miles northeast.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.1 to 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Late Triassic, 227 to 237 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.8 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 1 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 Lake Sumner reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Pecos and the Rio Grande: about 1,340 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake, Amistad Reservoir, Red Bluff Reservoir and Lake McMillan.
410 miles of the trip are on the Pecos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Sumner; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Sumner has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 Lake Sumner normally reaches 65° and falls to 33°. The record high is 82°, in 2025; the record low 10°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.53 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 at Sumner Lake, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
