The Avalon 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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78° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1915. Next is 77° in 2012.
Avalon’s center stands about 840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 880 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marmaton Group (limestone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 61×. 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, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 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 Avalon reaches the Gulf of America by way of Johnson Creek, the Grand River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,460 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 Avalon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Avalon has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Avalon normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low 11°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 1.85 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1915 at Chillicothe 2 S, 9 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
