The Independence 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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5° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 9° in 1986.
Independence’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 500 ft to 740 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hog Back Hill, about 760 ft, 7 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Borden Group (siltstone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 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 Independence reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,380 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 Independence; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Independence has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Independence normally reaches 51° and falls to 33°. The record high is 75°, in 1971; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.31 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Lafayette Purdue University Airport, 13 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
