The Byron 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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85° on Nov. 12, 1894, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 85° in 2016.
Byron’s center stands about 1,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,160 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace Deposits (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 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.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 17 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 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 1 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 Byron reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Salt Fork Arkansas, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,310 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Great Salt Plains Reservoir, 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 Byron; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Byron has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 30 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Kiowa, 13 miles northwest, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
