The Chapman 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
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1904. Next is 82° in 1949.
Chapman’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,100 ft to 1,240 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Custer Hill, about 1,360 ft, 15 miles northeast.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 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 Chapman reaches the Gulf of America by way of Chapman Creek, the Smoky Hill, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,730 river miles.
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 Chapman; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chapman has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Chapman normally reaches 56° and falls to 31°. The record high is 75°, in 2025; the record low 2°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.05 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Chapman, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
