The Cowden 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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4° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 9° in 1986.
Cowden’s center stands about 610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 640 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mattoon Formation (shale), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 304 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. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 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 Cowden reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi: about 1,260 river miles.
Lake on the way: Carlyle Reservoir.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cowden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cowden has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cowden normally reaches 53° and falls to 34°. The record high is 70°, in 2011; the record low 9°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.47 in, fell in 1978.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Shelbyville Dam, 12 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
