The Shenandoah 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.
Shenandoah’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 950 ft to 1,130 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wabaunsee Group (shale, mudstone), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 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 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 21 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 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 Shenandoah reaches the Gulf of America by way of the East Nishnabotna, the Nishnabotna, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,730 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 Shenandoah; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shenandoah 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 Shenandoah 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
