The Golconda 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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5° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 9° in 1986.
Golconda’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 300 ft to 620 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Potato Hill, about 880 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Pope Group (Aux Vases Sandstone through Glen Dean Limestone) (limestone, sandstone, shale), from the Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 38×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Late Mississippian, 324 to 331 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian, 315 to 324 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 0.1 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 Golconda reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lusk Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,050 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Golconda; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Golconda has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Golconda normally reaches 58° and falls to 38°. The record high is 75°, in 2025; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.01 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Dixon Springs Agric Cntr, 11 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
