Carbon, Iowa
9 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1954 and the latest in 1993. It stands in Douglas Township. It lies in ZIP code area 50839. It stands on Bull Creek. The Survey maps it on the Carbon quadrangle. 36 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 1,135 feet above sea level.
Population over time
2 figuresCarbon grew from 34 to 36 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.
| Year | People | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 34 | |
| 2020 | 36 | +2 (+6%) |
Topographic sheets covering this place
6 surveys from 9 printed sheetsMatched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.
- 1954 USGS Omaha quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
- 1957 USGS Omaha quadrangle1:250000
- 1958 USGS Omaha quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
- 1980 USGS Carbon quadrangle1:24000
- 1985 USGS Creston quadrangle1:100000
- 1993 USGS Creston quadrangle1:100000
Fires near this place
3 since 2006Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 3 fires within 5 miles of Carbon between 2006 and 2020, burning about 120 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Reported cause | Fires |
|---|---|
| Debris and open burning | 2 |
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1 |
The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.
| Date | Cause | Size | Reported by | Name on the report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 April 2017 | Debris and open burning | 10 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 2 February 2006 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 80 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 13 October 2020 | Debris and open burning | 30 acres | Iowa Department of Natural Resources | not named |
Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:
Storms near this place
18 since 2001Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Carbon in 18 storm reports between 2001 and 2024: 10 hail, 5 thunderstorm wind, 2 tornado, 1 funnel cloud. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.
| When | Event | Place named | Harm | What the report says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2013 | Hail | Carbon | $50,000 | Hail completely covered the ground. |
| May 2013 | Hail | Carbon | $50,000 | Two to three inch hail received via social media. |
| June 2008 | Thunderstorm Wind | Carbon | $30,000 | High winds destroyed a machine shed. |
| March 2002 | Thunderstorm Wind | Carbon | $30,000 | no account filed |
| March 2009 | Thunderstorm Wind | Carbon | $25,000 | A motor home has been blown on its side, with part of a roof blown off a house. Power poles were blown down, with all the debris lying off to the northeast. |
| April 2001 | Thunderstorm Wind | Carbon | $25,000 | no account filed |
| April 2024 | Tornado (EF0) | Carbon | $15,000 | A small tornado occurred north of Carbon, IA and was captured on video. This produced EF0 damage to a house with some missing shingles along with damage to a few different outbuildings. |
| June 2017 | Tornado (EF1) | Carbon | $10,000 | Tornado tracked across rural areas northwest of Carbon. Some minor damage occurred to outbuildings with most of the damage occurring to trees along the path. |
| June 2008 | Thunderstorm Wind | Carbon | $10,000 | no account filed |
| June 2002 | Hail | Carbon | $3,000 | no account filed |
| June 2008 | Hail | Carbon | $2,000 | no account filed |
| July 2003 | Hail | Carbon | $2,000 | no account filed |
| June 2014 | Hail | Carbon | $1,000 | Quarter size hail with wind gusts of 50 MPH. |
| September 2010 | Hail | Carbon | $1,000 | no account filed |
| June 2008 | Hail | Carbon | $1,000 | no account filed |
| May 2018 | Funnel Cloud | Carbon | - | Trained spotter reported a funnel nearly to the ground, and now back up. Still saw a lower of the cloud at the time of the report. |
| May 2011 | Hail | Carbon | - | Area received nearly 3.5 inches of rain as well. |
| April 2001 | Hail | Carbon | - | no account filed |
Nearest settlements
The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.
| Map | Place | Distance | Sheets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quincy | 1.9 miles | 9 | |
| Strand | 4.4 miles | 9 | |
| Dickieville | 5.1 miles | 9 | |
| Lincoln Center | 5.2 miles | 9 | |
| Brooks | 5.9 miles | 8 | |
| Corning | 6.0 miles | 8 | |
| Mount Etna | 6.7 miles | 9 | |
| Queen City (historical) | 6.8 miles | 9 |
Elsewhere
Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.
| Wikipedia article on Carbon | An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied. |
| Wikidata item Q589014 | The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0). |
Provenance
This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 455158. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.





