The Owensboro 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.
8° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 13° in 1997.
Owensboro’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 350 ft to 490 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Coal Knobs, about 710 ft, 12 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt), 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 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.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.1 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 Owensboro reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Horse Fork, Panther Creek, the Green River, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,220 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Owensboro; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Owensboro has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 11 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 51 inches of water.
On November 14 Owensboro normally reaches 57° and falls to 37°. The record high is 77°, in 2011; the record low 20°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 1.85 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Boonville 1 S, 20 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.