The Manitou 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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94° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 89° in 1944.
Manitou’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,190 ft to 1,370 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Long Mountain, about 1,770 ft, 10 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Garber Sandstone (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 40×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 million years old. About 0.7 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 Manitou reaches the Gulf of America by way of Deadman Creek, Deep Red Creek, West Cache Creek, Cache Creek, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 1,100 river miles.
880 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Manitou; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Manitou has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Manitou normally reaches 64° and falls to 38°. The record high is 89°, in 2025; the record low 18°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Tipton 4 S Mesonet, 10 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
