The Hitchcock 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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84° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 83° in 2025.
Hitchcock’s center stands about 1,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,180 ft to 1,480 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Henquent, about 1,470 ft, 5 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Flowerpot Shale (shale, 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 36×. 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. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, shale, siltstone. 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 Hitchcock reaches the Gulf of America by way of Salt Creek, the Cimarron, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,300 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 Hitchcock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hitchcock has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hitchcock normally reaches 61° and falls to 35°. The record high is 83°, in 2025; the record low 12°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.63 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Watonga, 8 miles south-southwest, 240 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
