The Fairfield 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny
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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.
Fairfield’s center stands about 1,470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,120 ft to 1,640 ft, a difference of 520 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pea Vine Hill, about 2,940 ft, 10 miles south.
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 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, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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. 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 Fairfield reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hendricks Creek, Tubmill Creek, the Conemaugh, the Kiskiminetas, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,040 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 Fairfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairfield 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 Fairfield 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, 18 miles north, 370 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
