The Independence 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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14° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 15° in 1940.
Independence’s center stands about 360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 270 ft to 410 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kosciusko formation (sand, clay), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 58×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Claystone, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 5 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 Independence reaches the Gulf of America by way of Little Beartail Creek, Beartail Creek, the Coldwater, the Tallahatchie, the Yazoo and the Mississippi: about 790 river miles.
Lake on the way: Arkabutla Lake.
450 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Independence; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Independence has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 56 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Independence normally reaches 62° and falls to 40°. The record high is 83°, in 1955; the record low 18°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.95 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Hernando, 13 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
