The Bureau Junction 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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1° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1901. Next is 4° in 2019.
Bureau Junction’s center stands about 520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 680 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country.
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 40×. 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, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 0.5 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 Bureau Junction reaches the Gulf of America by way of Old Channel Big Bureau Creek, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,400 river miles.
Lake on the way: Peoria Lake.
1,190 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bureau Junction; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bureau Junction has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Bureau Junction normally reaches 49° and falls to 30°. The record high is 76°, in 1989; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.04 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Peru, 14 miles east-northeast, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
