The Atkinson 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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76° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 75° in 1971.
Atkinson’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 600 ft to 750 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Indian Hill, about 810 ft, 12 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carbondale Formation (shale, sandstone, coal), from the Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 0.7 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 Atkinson reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Green River, the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,490 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Atkinson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Atkinson has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Atkinson normally reaches 50° and falls to 31°. The record high is 75°, in 1971; the record low 8°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.43 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Geneseo, 7 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
