The Hepler 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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81° on Nov. 12, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1957. Next is 81° in 1999.
Hepler’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,010 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pleasanton Group (shale, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 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 Hepler reaches the Gulf of America by way of Walnut Creek, Flat Rock Creek, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,240 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 Hepler; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hepler has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Hepler normally reaches 57° and falls to 36°. The record high is 80°, in 1964; the record low 5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Girard, 13 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
