The De Soto 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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80° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is 78° in 1949.
De Soto’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 970 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Mound, about 1,060 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
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 59×. 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, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.6 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 De Soto reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,560 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 De Soto; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
De Soto has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 De Soto normally reaches 55° and falls to 34°. The record high is 78°, in 1964; the record low 9°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.60 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 at Olathe Johnson County Industrial Airport, 12 miles south-southeast, 200 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
