The Penalosa 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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3° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1907. Next is 6° in 1959.
Penalosa’s center stands about 1,730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,660 ft to 1,750 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt, clay), from the Pleistocene, 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 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.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 Penalosa reaches the Gulf of America by way of Goose Creek, Silver Creek, the North Fork Ninnescah, the Ninnescah, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,410 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Cheney Reservoir, 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 Penalosa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Penalosa 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 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Penalosa normally reaches 58° and falls to 32°. The record high is 75°, in 1988; the record low 8°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.47 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Kingman, 12 miles east-southeast, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
