The Chautauqua 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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84° on Nov. 11, 1949, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 84° in 1989.
Chautauqua’s center stands about 910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Douglas Group (shale, sandstone), 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 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.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
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 Chautauqua reaches the Gulf of America by way of Turkey Creek, the Caney, the Verdigris, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,180 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 Chautauqua; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chautauqua has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Chautauqua normally reaches 60° and falls to 35°. The record high is 83°, in 1999; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.15 in, fell in 1924.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Sedan, 7 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
