The Fairview 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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Showers likely
−22° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is −12° in 1940.
Fairview’s center stands about 1,230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,200 ft to 1,480 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Canton Mounds, about 1,440 ft, 8 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carlile Shale, from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. 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: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Chalk, marlstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 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 Fairview reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Big Sioux, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,990 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fairview; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairview has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Fairview normally reaches 44° and falls to 24°. The record high is 73°, in 1953; the record low −22°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.49 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Canton, 8 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
