The Hesston 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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Showers likely
83° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 82° in 1999.
Hesston’s center stands about 1,480 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,440 ft to 1,500 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country.
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 3 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 20 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Hesston reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dry Creek, West Emma Creek, Emma Creek, the Little Arkansas, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,360 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 Hesston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hesston 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 Hesston 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, 19 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
