The Bison 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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5.82 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1894. The next wettest, 3.50 inches, fell in 1909.
Bison’s center stands about 1,220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,110 ft to 1,250 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bison Formation or Bison Shale (shale, sandstone, siltstone), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 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, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 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. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Bison reaches the Gulf of America by way of Buffalo Creek, Turkey Creek, the Cimarron, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,280 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bison has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Bison normally reaches 60° and falls to 38°. The record high is 82°, in 1973; the record low 13°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Enid, 15 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
