The Mays 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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3.41 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1901. The next wettest, 2.76 inches, fell in 1938.
Mays’s center stands about 1,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 980 ft to 1,060 ft, a difference of 80 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 5 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.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 1 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 Mays reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Little Blue, the Big Blue, the Driftwood, the Flatrock, the East Fork White, 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 Mays; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mays has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Mays normally reaches 51° and falls to 33°. The record high is 77°, in 1955; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.97 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Rushville, 10 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
