The Pocahontas 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
8° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1962. Next is 9° in 1986.
Pocahontas’s center stands about 550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 590 ft, a difference of 130 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 22 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 2 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 Pocahontas reaches the Gulf of America by way of Shoal Creek, the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi: about 1,200 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pocahontas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pocahontas has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 46 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Pocahontas normally reaches 56° and falls to 36°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.20 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at Carlyle Reservoir, 17 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
