The Spencer 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Partly cloudy
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3.91 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1895. The next wettest, 3.15 inches, fell in 2005.
Spencer’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 530 ft to 830 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hale Hill, about 950 ft, 7 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sanders Group (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 41×. 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: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 Spencer reaches the Gulf of America by way of the White River, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,340 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 Spencer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spencer 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 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Spencer normally reaches 53° and falls to 34°. The record high is 79°, in 1955; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.34 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Bloomington Indiana University, 15 miles east-southeast, 260 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
