The Holden 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
80° on Nov. 14, 1964, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 80° in 1999.
Holden’s center stands about 870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 770 ft to 910 ft, a difference of 140 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 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 20 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.7 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 Holden reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pin Oak Creek, the South Fork Blackwater, the Blackwater, the Lamine, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,470 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 Holden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Holden has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Holden normally reaches 56° and falls to 33°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 6°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.87 in, fell in 1913.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Warrensburg 4 NW, 11 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
