The Delphi 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.
2° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 13° in 2014.
Delphi’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 520 ft to 680 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Mound, about 740 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wabash Formation (limestone, dolostone), 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 51×. 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, dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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 Delphi reaches the Gulf of America by way of Deer Creek, the Wabash, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,420 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 Delphi; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Delphi has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 25 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Young America, 18 miles east, 200 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.