The Cowan 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. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1962. Next is 9° in 1986.
Cowan’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 960 ft to 1,060 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Louisville Limestone through Brassfield Limestone, from the Silurian, 422 to 445 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 62×. 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. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 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 Cowan reaches the Gulf of America by way of No Name Creek, Buck Creek, the White River, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,500 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cowan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cowan has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cowan normally reaches 53° and falls to 36°. The record high is 71°, in 1989; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.69 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at Muncie Delaware County Airport, 9 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
