The Protection 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.
Showers likely
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Partly cloudy
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Mostly sunny
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88° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 86° in 1988.
Protection’s center stands about 1,850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,800 ft to 1,910 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Jesus, about 2,350 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dune Sand, from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 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.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 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 Protection reaches the Gulf of America by way of Kiowa Creek, Cavalry Creek, Bluff Creek, the Cimarron, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,410 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 Protection; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Protection has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 25 inches of water.
On November 14 Protection normally reaches 62° and falls to 35°. The record high is 86°, in 1988; the record low 4°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.84 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Coldwater, 10 miles east-northeast, 260 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
