The Natoma 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 cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
87° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 82° in 2012.
Natoma’s center stands about 1,840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,800 ft to 2,070 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Hills, about 2,140 ft, 15 miles south-southwest.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 48×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.2 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 Natoma reaches the Gulf of America by way of Paradise Creek, the Saline, the Smoky Hill, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,000 river miles.
Lake on the way: Wilson Lake.
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 Natoma; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Natoma has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Natoma normally reaches 56° and falls to 26°. The record high is 87°, in 1999; the record low −9°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.93 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Alton 2 SW, 18 miles north, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
