The Scotland 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.
6° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 7° in 1959.
Scotland’s center stands about 620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 520 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tunnel Hill, about 890 ft, 9 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Raccoon Creek Group (shale, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 44×. 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 19 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.3 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 Scotland reaches the Gulf of America by way of Doans Creek, 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 Scotland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Scotland 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 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Scotland normally reaches 54° and falls to 33°. The record high is 75°, in 1978; the record low 7°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.77 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Oolitic Purdue Ex Frm, 19 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.