The Wheaton 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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81° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1972. Next is 81° in 2022.
Wheaton’s center stands about 1,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,240 ft to 1,430 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Oakleigh Mountain, about 1,580 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Osagean Series (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 24 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 Wheaton reaches the Gulf of America by way of South Indian Creek, Indian Creek, the Elk River, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,180 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wheaton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wheaton has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Wheaton normally reaches 58° and falls to 37°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 12°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.89 in, fell in 1978.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Monett 4 SW, 9 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
