The Whitewater 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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6° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 11° in 2018.
Whitewater’s center stands about 1,370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,340 ft to 1,420 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sumner Group (shale), from the Permian, 252 to 299 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 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.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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 Whitewater reaches the Gulf of America by way of the West Branch Whitewater, the Whitewater, the Walnut, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,380 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 Whitewater; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Whitewater has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Wichita Colonel James Jabara Airport, 15 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
