The Clayton 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
71° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 69° in 1990.
Clayton’s center stands about 1,230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,160 ft to 1,310 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 24 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 Clayton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Moon Creek, Turtle Creek, the Hay, the Red Cedar, the Chippewa and the Mississippi: about 1,850 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clayton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clayton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. A normal year brings about 51 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Clayton normally reaches 41° and falls to 24°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low 3°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 2010.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Ridgeland 1 NNE, 16 miles east-southeast, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
