The Sylvia 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
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1922. Next is 82° in 2025.
Sylvia’s center stands about 1,740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,670 ft to 1,790 ft, a difference of 120 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 3 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. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 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 Sylvia reaches the Gulf of America by way of 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 Sylvia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sylvia has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° 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 Sylvia normally reaches 58° and falls to 32°. The record high is 76°, in 2025; the record low 4°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1922 at Hudson, 17 miles northwest, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
