The Athol 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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81° on Nov. 11, 2012, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1910. Next is 81° in 2016.
Athol’s center stands about 1,790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,710 ft to 1,890 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Mound, about 2,060 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Loess (silt), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.9 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 Athol reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Solomon, the Solomon, the Smoky Hill, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,000 river miles.
Lake on the way: Waconda Lake.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Athol; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Athol has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 26 inches of water.
On November 14 Athol normally reaches 54° and falls to 28°. The record high is 77°, in 1990; the record low −3°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1910 at Smith Center, 8 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
