County Maps US

Tools Elevation, time and sun

Elevation Finder

Search a place or click the map. The height comes from a global 90-metre digital elevation model, which is stated on the page rather than hidden.

How to use it

  1. Type an address, a city, a peak or a "lat, lng" pair, or press "Use my location".
  2. Or click anywhere on the map; the pin moves there.
  3. Read the elevation in feet and metres, the terrain band and the air pressure at that height.
  4. Copy the page link to share the point; the location is kept in the address bar.

How it works

The height is read from the Copernicus GLO-90 digital elevation model through the Open-Meteo elevation API, one request per point, only after you pick a place. GLO-90 has a 90 metre cell, so the value is the average ground height of a cell about the size of a city block; it does not know about buildings, bridges or a cliff edge inside the cell, and in steep terrain it can differ from a survey marker by tens of feet.

The terrain band is a plain label from the height alone: below sea level, lowland (0 to 500 m), upland (500 to 1,500 m) or mountain (above 1,500 m). Air pressure uses the International Standard Atmosphere, P = 1013.25 x (1 - 2.25577e-5 x h)^5.25588 hectopascals for h in metres, and "effective oxygen" is 20.9% scaled by that pressure ratio, the usual way altitude oxygen is quoted. Real weather moves the pressure by a few percent either way.

Questions

How accurate is the elevation?
To within a few metres on flat ground and within tens of metres on steep slopes, because each value is the mean height of a 90 metre cell. For a legal or engineering figure use a survey.
Why does it differ from my phone or Google Earth?
Phones report a GPS altitude that is often 10 to 50 metres off and may be measured above the ellipsoid instead of sea level. Other sites use different terrain models with different cell sizes, so small differences are normal.
What does a negative elevation mean?
The ground is below mean sea level, as in Death Valley, the Dead Sea shore or parts of the Netherlands and New Orleans.

All map tools, free and without an account. Location data is processed in your browser and by the open geocoding services named on the sources page; nothing is stored by this site.