The McKinney 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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77° on Nov. 14, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1979. Next is 77° in 2020.
McKinney’s center stands about 1,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,280 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sand Knob, about 1,570 ft, 14 miles south.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. 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: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.8 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 McKinney reaches the Gulf of America by way of McKinney Branch, Hanging Fork Creek, the Dix, the Kentucky, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,580 river miles.
Lake on the way: Herrington 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 McKinney; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McKinney has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 51 inches of water.
On November 14 McKinney normally reaches 59° and falls to 37°. The record high is 77°, in 1993; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.35 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1979 at Crab Orchard 6 N, 18 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
