The May 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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May’s center stands about 2,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,020 ft to 2,200 ft, a difference of 180 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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 35×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.5 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 May reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Beaver, the North Canadian, the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,520 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Canton Lake, 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 May; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
