The Pershing 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.
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
86° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1920. Next is 85° in 1999.
Pershing’s center stands about 910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Phinney Hill, about 1,100 ft, 10 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Vamoosa Group or Vamoosa Formation (shale, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 53×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Pershing reaches the Gulf of America by way of Birch Creek, Bird Creek, the Verdigris, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,130 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 Pershing; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pershing has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Pershing normally reaches 61° and falls to 35°. The record high is 80°, in 1988; the record low 12°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 2.24 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1920 at Bartlesville Municipal Airport, 19 miles northeast, 220 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
