The Madison 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
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 81° in 2016.
Madison’s center stands about 1,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,050 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Texaco Hill, about 1,630 ft, 14 miles west-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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. 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 19 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 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 to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.6 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 Madison reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Verdigris, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,310 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Oologah Lake, Murray Lake, Ozark Lake and Toronto 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 Madison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Madison has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Madison normally reaches 57° and falls to 34°. The record high is 75°, in 2025; the record low 7°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 at Emporia Asos, 14 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
