The Olpe 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
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.
Olpe’s center stands about 1,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,150 ft to 1,270 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 42×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.4 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 Olpe reaches the Gulf of America by way of Eagle Creek, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,370 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 Olpe; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Olpe 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 Olpe 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, 5 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
