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.
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12° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1955. Next is 13° in 2019.
Fairfield’s center stands about 810 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 890 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gravely Hill, about 1,100 ft, 12 miles southeast.
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 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 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 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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. 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 Middle Fork Drakes Creek, Drakes Creek, the Barren, the Green River, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,410 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 Fairfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairfield has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 54 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Fairfield normally reaches 59° and falls to 38°. The record high is 77°, in 1964; the record low 15°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1955 at Portland Sewage Plant, 10 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
