The Belle Center 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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1° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 4° in 2019.
Belle Center’s center stands about 1,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,030 ft to 1,160 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Campbell Hill, about 1,550 ft, 10 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Salina Group (dolostone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
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.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, black-shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 445 million years old. About 0.7 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 Belle Center reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Fork Great Miami, the Great Miami, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,620 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Belle Center; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Belle Center has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Belle Center normally reaches 50° and falls to 32°. The record high is 72°, in 1931; the record low 8°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.77 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Bellefontaine, 11 miles south, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
