The Baxter Springs 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
5.47 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1892. The next wettest, 4.29 inches, fell in 1958.
Baxter Springs’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 930 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Meramecian and Osagian Series: Warsaw Limestone and Keokuk Limestone (limestone, dolostone, chert), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Chert, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Baxter Springs reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Spring, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,150 river miles.
Lakes on the way: 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 Baxter Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Baxter Springs has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Baxter Springs normally reaches 58° and falls to 37°. The record high is 82°, in 1964; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.25 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Columbus, 11 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
