The Lelia 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.
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90° on Nov. 17, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 89° in 1995.
Lelia Lake’s center stands about 2,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,520 ft to 2,720 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gunboat Mountain, about 2,930 ft, 9 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ogallala Formation (sand), from the Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 0.6 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 Lelia Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Lelia Lake Creek, Lelia Lake Creek, the Salt Fork Red, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 1,260 river miles.
980 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lelia Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lelia Lake has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. About 22 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lelia Lake normally reaches 64° and falls to 36°. The record high is 88°, in 1988; the record low 10°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.10 in, fell in 1924.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Memphis, 18 miles southeast, 520 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
