The Wakarusa 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 1949. Next is 4° in 1959.
Wakarusa’s center stands about 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,100 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stenger Hill, about 1,240 ft, 5 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt, clay), 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 60×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.3 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 Wakarusa reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Wakarusa, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,620 river miles.
Lake on the way: Clinton 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 Wakarusa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wakarusa has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Wakarusa normally reaches 56° and falls to 33°. The record high is 76°, in 1964; the record low 7°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.68 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Topeka Forbes Field, 5 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
