The Hamilton 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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10° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 10° in 2019.
Hamilton’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 890 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Heitsmanns Hill, about 900 ft, 3 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kope Formation (shale), from the Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 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 45×. 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: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 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 Hamilton reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Great Miami, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,490 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 Hamilton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hamilton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hamilton normally reaches 54° and falls to 33°. The record high is 78°, in 1931; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Fairfield, 3 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
