The Prospect 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.
4° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1955. Next is 8° in 1959.
Prospect’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 470 ft to 850 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gobblers Knob, about 960 ft, 9 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Blue River Group (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 45×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 Prospect reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Lost, the East Fork White, the White River, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,300 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 Prospect; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prospect has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 13 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 Prospect normally reaches 56° and falls to 32°. The record high is 79°, in 1955; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.59 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1955 at Dubois Srn In Forage Farm, 10 miles south-southwest, 200 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.