The Willard 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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84° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1887. Next is 80° in 1949.
Willard’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,070 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buffalo Mound, about 1,250 ft, 7 miles west-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 5 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.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene, 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 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 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 Willard reaches the Gulf of America by way of Post Creek, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,630 river miles.
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 Willard; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Willard has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Willard normally reaches 56° and falls to 34°. The record high is 77°, in 1897; the record low 6°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.90 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 from the Topeka Area threaded record (Topeka Asos, 17 miles east). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
