The Indianapolis 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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4° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 8° in 2019.
Indianapolis’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 780 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Muscatatuck Group (limestone, dolostone), from the Devonian, 359 to 422 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.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 11 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 Indianapolis reaches the Gulf of America by way of the White River, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,410 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 Indianapolis; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Indianapolis has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 26 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Indianapolis normally reaches 52° and falls to 35°. The record high is 76°, in 1971; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 4.15 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Indianapolis Area threaded record (Indianapolis International Airport, 7 miles west-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
