The Channing 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.
Chance of showers
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3° on Nov. 17, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1964. Next is 6° in 2018.
Channing’s center stands about 3,800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,560 ft to 3,910 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country.
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 26×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 208 to 247 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 208 to 247 million years old. About 0.8 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 Channing reaches the Gulf of America by way of Middle Cheyenne Creek, the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,600 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
620 miles of the trip are on the Canadian.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Channing; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Channing has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Channing normally reaches 63° and falls to 31°. The record high is 86°, in 2025; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1964 at Boys Ranch, 11 miles south-southeast, 610 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
