The Durant 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.
74° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 71° in 2012.
Durant’s center stands about 720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 790 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Scotch Grove Formation (dolostone), from the Silurian, 431 to 440 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 431 to 440 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone, mudstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Durant reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Elkhorn Creek, Mud Creek, Sugar Creek, the Cedar River, the Iowa and the Mississippi: about 1,480 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Durant; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Durant has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Illinois City Dam 16, 13 miles south-southwest, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.