The Galva 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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83° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 82° in 1999.
Galva’s center stands about 1,550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,500 ft to 1,560 ft, a difference of 60 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Loess (silt), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, black-shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Claystone, mudstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Galva reaches the Gulf of America by way of Turkey Creek, the Little Arkansas, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,400 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 Galva; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Galva has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Galva normally reaches 57° and falls to 32°. The record high is 76°, in 1988; the record low 2°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Mcpherson, 4 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
