The Prairie Creek 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
4° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1875. Next is 12° in 1911.
Prairie Creek’s center stands about 530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 450 ft to 600 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Yaw Hill, about 740 ft, 9 miles east-northeast.
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 6 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 13 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.7 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 Prairie Creek 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 1,280 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 Prairie Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prairie Creek has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Prairie Creek normally reaches 53° and falls to 34°. The record high is 77°, in 1931; the record low 14°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.10 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1875 at Terre Haute Hulman Regional Airport, 15 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
