The Benton City 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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1° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 7° in 2019.
Benton City’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
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 3 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.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 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 Benton City reaches the Gulf of America by way of the West Fork Cuivre, the Cuivre and the Mississippi: about 1,330 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Benton City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Benton City has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Benton City normally reaches 53° and falls to 33°. The record high is 77°, in 1960; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Vandalia, 19 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
