The Hickman 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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Showers likely
79° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 77° in 2025.
Hickman’s center stands about 1,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,220 ft to 1,400 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Council Grove Group (shale, limestone), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
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 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.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 0.2 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 Hickman reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hickman Branch, Wahoo Creek, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,840 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 Hickman; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hickman has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 25 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Hickman normally reaches 52° and falls to 29°. The record high is 74°, in 2025; the record low −1°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.91 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Crete 4 ESE, 13 miles west, 180 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
