The Houstonia 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
3.54 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1940. The next wettest, 2.74 inches, fell in 2015.
Houstonia’s center stands about 780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 820 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Riverton Formation, Burgner Formation (shale, siltstone, mudstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 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.
Shale, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 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 Houstonia reaches the Gulf of America by way of Buffalo Creek, the Blackwater, the Lamine, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,420 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 Houstonia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Houstonia has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Houstonia normally reaches 55° and falls to 32°. The record high is 81°, in 1964; the record low 9°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.69 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Sweet Springs, 6 miles northwest, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
