The Springfield 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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78° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 73° in 1971.
Springfield’s center stands about 980 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,070 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Knobs, about 1,270 ft, 8 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cedarville, Springfield, and Euphemia Dolomites, Undivided (dolostone), from the Silurian, 422 to 434 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 46×. 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, dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 434 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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 Springfield reaches the Gulf of America by way of Buck Creek, the Mad, the Great Miami, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,560 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 Springfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Springfield has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Springfield normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 71°, in 1989; the record low 4°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Springfield Water Treatment Plant, 3 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
