The Auburn 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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3° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 4° in 1959.
Auburn’s center stands about 1,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,160 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stenger Hill, about 1,240 ft, 6 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wabaunsee Group (shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 51×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.6 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 Auburn reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Wakarusa, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,630 river miles.
Lake on the way: Clinton 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 Auburn; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Auburn has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Auburn normally reaches 56° and falls to 33°. The record high is 76°, in 1964; the record low 7°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.68 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Topeka Forbes Field, 9 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
