The Rankin 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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2° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 3° in 2019.
Rankin’s center stands about 720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 750 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows New Albany Shale, Blocher Shale, Sylamore Sandstone, Selmier Shale, Sweetland Creek Shale, Grassy Creek Shale, Saverton Shale, and Louisiana Limestone, from the Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 388 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Siltstone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 388 million years old. About 4 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 Rankin reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pigeon Creek, Mud Creek, Sugar Creek, the Iroquois, the Kankakee, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,590 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 Rankin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rankin has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Rankin normally reaches 51° and falls to 34°. The record high is 74°, in 1971; the record low 10°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.14 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Hoopeston, 11 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
