The Buchanan 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−11° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is −8° in 2019.
Buchanan’s center stands about 1,560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,520 ft to 1,580 ft, a difference of 60 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Round Top, about 1,920 ft, 11 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Formation (shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Buchanan reaches the Gulf of America by way of Depuy Dam Lake, the James, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,570 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Columbia Road Reservoir and Depuy Dam Lake.
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 Buchanan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Buchanan has a dry-winter warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 1° in January. About 20 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Buchanan normally reaches 38° and falls to 20°. The record high is 70°, in 2025; the record low −11°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.08 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Jamestown Municipal Airport, 12 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
