The Hale 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.
78° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1915. Next is 77° in 2012.
Hale’s center stands about 780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 820 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mound Bogard, about 940 ft, 14 miles southwest.
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 55×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 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 Hale reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hurricane Creek, the Grand River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,450 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 Hale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hale 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 Hale 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, 16 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.