The Plato 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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4.87 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1936. The next wettest, 4.04 inches, fell in 2015.
Plato’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,060 ft to 1,410 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country.
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 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, chert. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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 Plato reaches the Gulf of America by way of Roubidoux Creek, the Gasconade, 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 Plato; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Plato has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 11 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Plato normally reaches 56° and falls to 35°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 4.47 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1936 at Licking 4 N, 19 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
