The Emporia 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
80° on Nov. 12, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1979. Next is 80° in 1999.
Emporia’s center stands about 1,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,090 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt, clay), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 56×. 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: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 Emporia reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Cottonwood, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,380 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 Emporia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Emporia has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Emporia normally reaches 55° and falls to 32°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 5°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.95 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1979 at Emporia 3 NW, 3 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
