The Bushong 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
85° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1964. Next is 83° in 1999.
Bushong’s center stands about 1,390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,250 ft to 1,470 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gun Barrel Hill, about 1,590 ft, 12 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Council Grove Group (limestone, shale), from the Permian, 252 to 299 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 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Bushong reaches the Gulf of America by way of Allen Creek, Dow Creek, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,410 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 Bushong; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bushong has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Bushong normally reaches 56° and falls to 34°. The record high is 83°, in 1999; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.26 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1964 at Council Grove Lake, 14 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
