The Zionsville 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 1996. Next is 13° in 1997.
Zionsville’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 820 ft to 950 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows New Albany Shale (black-shale), from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 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 59×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 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 Zionsville reaches the Gulf of America by way of Eagle Creek, the White River, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,430 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 Zionsville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Zionsville has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Zionsville normally reaches 53° and falls to 35°. The record high is 70°, in 2025; the record low 18°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.52 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Indianapolis Eagle Creek Airport, 9 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.