The Bolivar 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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77° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1946. Next is 74° in 1956.
Bolivar’s center stands about 1,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,020 ft to 2,410 ft, a difference of 1,390 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pea Vine Hill, about 2,940 ft, 15 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Allegheny Formation (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 10×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.8 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 Bolivar reaches the Gulf of America by way of Tubmill Creek, the Conemaugh, the Kiskiminetas, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,030 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bolivar; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bolivar has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 46 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Bolivar normally reaches 52° and falls to 30°. The record high is 73°, in 1994; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.77 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1946 at Indiana 3 SE, 14 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
