The West Line 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
7° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 11° in 2018.
West Line’s center stands about 930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,080 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Miller Hill, about 1,130 ft, 13 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kansas City 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 10 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 West Line reaches the Gulf of America by way of Poney Creek, the South Grand, the Osage, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,570 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 West Line; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Line has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 West Line normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 75°, in 2025; the record low 12°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.08 in, fell in 2022.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Olathe Johnson County Executive Airport, 17 miles north-northwest, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
