The Manhattan 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. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 80° in 1990.
Manhattan’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Custer Hill, about 1,360 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 40×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 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. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 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 Manhattan reaches the Gulf of America by way of Wildcat Creek, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,680 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Manhattan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Manhattan has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Manhattan normally reaches 55° and falls to 32°. The record high is 79°, in 1897; the record low 2°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.28 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Manhattan, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
