The Arcola 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
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3.41 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.02 inches, fell in 1985.
Arcola’s center stands about 680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 680 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mattoon Formation (shale), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 304 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. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 1 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 Arcola reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Scattering Fork, the Embarras, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,380 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Arcola; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Arcola has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Arcola normally reaches 52° and falls to 33°. The record high is 77°, in 1971; the record low 9°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.20 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Tuscola, 8 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
