The Cave City 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.
4.51 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1923. The next wettest, 4.10 inches, fell in 1957.
Cave City’s center stands about 650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 770 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Younger Hill, about 860 ft, 13 miles west.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. 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, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.1 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 Cave City reaches the Gulf of America by way of Curia Creek, Old Curia Creek, the Black River, the White River and the Mississippi: about 940 river miles.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cave City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cave City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 Cave City normally reaches 59° and falls to 35°. The record high is 85°, in 1999; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.80 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1923 at Evening Shade 1 NNE, 10 miles north-northwest, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.