The LaFayette 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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9° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 12° in 1959.
LaFayette’s center stands about 550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 520 ft to 640 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis Limestones, undivided, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 59×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 LaFayette reaches the Gulf of America by way of Noahs Spring Branch, the Little West Fork, the West Fork Red, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,180 river miles.
Lake on the way: Bards Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of LaFayette; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
LaFayette has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 LaFayette normally reaches 59° and falls to 38°. The record high is 82°, in 1955; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.72 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Hopkinsville, 15 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
