The Midland 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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81° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1961. Next is 75° in 2022.
Midland’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 660 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Round Knob, about 1,440 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 28×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Midland reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,910 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Midland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Midland has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Midland normally reaches 51° and falls to 34°. The record high is 71°, in 1994; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.89 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1961 at Montgomery Lock & Dam, 3 miles east-northeast, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
