The Orient 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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79° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 73° in 1917.
Orient’s center stands about 1,350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,230 ft to 1,370 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Douglas Group (shale, mudstone), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Shale, mudstone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 4 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 Orient reaches the Gulf of America by way of Ninemile Creek, the Thompson, the Grand River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,650 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 Orient; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orient has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 26 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Orient normally reaches 48° and falls to 28°. The record high is 77°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.73 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Greenfield, 6 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
