The Thurston 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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5° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 10° in 1996.
Thurston’s center stands about 880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 1,000 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jacobs Ladder, about 1,250 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Maxville Limestone; Rushville, Logan, and Cuyhoga Formations, Undivided (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 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 51×. 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, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale, black-shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Thurston reaches the Gulf of America by way of Walnut Creek, the Scioto, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,740 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 Thurston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Thurston has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Thurston normally reaches 53° and falls to 32°. The record high is 73°, in 2011; the record low 15°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Lancaster Fairfield County Airport, 8 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
