The Big Rock 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
83° on Nov. 17, 1958, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 82° in 1909.
Big Rock’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 450 ft to 700 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows St. Louis Limestone and Warsaw Limestone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 51×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.3 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 Big Rock reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dyers Creek, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,120 river miles.
Lake on the way: Bards Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Rock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Rock has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 55 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Big Rock normally reaches 60° and falls to 38°. The record high is 80°, in 1955; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.30 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Dover 1 W, 8 miles southwest, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
