The Lake Tomahawk 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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81° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1961. Next is 75° in 2022.
Lake Tomahawk’s center stands about 1,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 840 ft to 1,260 ft, a difference of 420 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Round Knob, about 1,440 ft, 7 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Conemaugh Group (shale, siltstone, mudstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
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 29×. 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, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.5 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 Tomahawk reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rough Run, Little Beaver Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,920 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Tomahawk; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Tomahawk has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lake Tomahawk normally reaches 51° and falls to 34°. The record high is 71°, in 1994; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.89 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1961 at Montgomery Lock & Dam, 14 miles southeast, 460 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
