The Patoka 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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6° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 7° in 1959.
Patoka’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 590 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Hill, about 630 ft, 2 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Patoka and Shelburn Formations (shale, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 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 Patoka reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Patoka, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,200 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 Patoka; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Patoka has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Patoka normally reaches 55° and falls to 34°. The record high is 80°, in 1931; the record low 9°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 4.29 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at 1 WSW Princeton, 4 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
