The Riverton 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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83° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1918. Next is 78° in 1964.
Riverton’s center stands about 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 910 ft to 1,070 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brickyard Hill, about 1,170 ft, 15 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wabaunsee Group (shale, mudstone), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 61×. 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 24 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 Riverton reaches the Gulf of America by way of the East Nishnabotna, the Nishnabotna, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,720 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 Riverton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Riverton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° 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 Riverton normally reaches 51° and falls to 30°. The record high is 83°, in 1999; the record low −2°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1918 at Shenandoah, 12 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
