The Oacoma 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.
80° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1980. Next is 80° in 2005.
Oacoma’s center stands about 1,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,360 ft to 1,740 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lewis Hill, about 1,800 ft, 11 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace Deposits (coarse-detrital, clay), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 41×. 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, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.6 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 Oacoma reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,120 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Francis Case and Lewis and Clark Lake.
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 Oacoma; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oacoma has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 24 inches of water.
On November 14 Oacoma normally reaches 47° and falls to 24°. The record high is 77°, in 1999; the record low −8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.17 in, fell in 1983.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1980 at Chamberlain 5 S, 6 miles southeast, 320 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.