The Adair 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.
79° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 75° in 1941.
Adair’s center stands about 1,470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,290 ft to 1,480 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marmaton Group (shale, limestone), from the Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 59×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 315 million years old. About 3 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 Adair reaches the Gulf of America by way of Turkey Creek, the East Nishnabotna, the Nishnabotna, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,810 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Adair; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Adair has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Adair normally reaches 48° and falls to 26°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low −3°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.24 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Guthrie Center, 14 miles north-northeast, 400 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.