The Highland 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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7° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 8° in 2019.
Highland’s center stands about 560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 480 ft to 600 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bond Formation (shale, sandstone, limestone), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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, limestone. 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 11 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 Highland reaches the Gulf of America by way of East Fork Silver Creek, Silver Creek, the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi: about 1,170 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Highland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Highland has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 11 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Highland normally reaches 59° and falls to 37°. The record high is 82°, in 1999; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.23 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Belleville Siu Research, 19 miles south-southwest, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
