The Watopa 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
71° on Nov. 14, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1936. Next is 68° in 1939.
Watopa’s center stands about 1,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 660 ft to 1,190 ft, a difference of 530 ft: hilly country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Ordovician (dolostone, sandstone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 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 Watopa reaches the Gulf of America by way of East Indian Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,730 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Watopa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Watopa has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 37 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Watopa normally reaches 43° and falls to 28°. The record high is 71°, in 1990; the record low 2°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1936 at Alma Dam 4, 7 miles north-northeast, 480 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
