The Burr Oak 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
81° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1900. Next is 78° in 1952.
Burr Oak’s center stands about 1,660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,640 ft to 1,820 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt, clay), 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 61×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 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 Burr Oak reaches the Gulf of America by way of White Rock Creek, the Republican, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,880 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lovewell Reservoir.
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 Burr Oak; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Burr Oak has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Burr Oak normally reaches 53° and falls to 26°. The record high is 75°, in 2025; the record low −1°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.46 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1900 at Burr Oak 4 S, 5 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
