The Altoona 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.
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85° on Nov. 11, 1958, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 84° in 1949.
Altoona’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 970 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is West Mound, about 1,040 ft, 10 miles west.
The section below crosses 3 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, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 Altoona reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Verdigris, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,220 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Oologah Lake, Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Altoona; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Altoona has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Altoona normally reaches 58° and falls to 35°. The record high is 82°, in 1999; the record low 10°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Fredonia, 9 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
