The Eureka 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, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 83° in 2016.
Eureka’s center stands about 1,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,020 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Temple Knob, about 1,630 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wabaunsee Group (shale), 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 39×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 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: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 0.3 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 Eureka reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Fall, the Verdigris, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,280 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Oologah Lake, 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 Eureka; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Eureka has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° 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 Eureka normally reaches 58° and falls to 32°. The record high is 82°, in 1999; the record low 6°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Eureka 1 E, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
