The McCaskill 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.
9.12 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1899. The next wettest, 3.53 inches, fell in 1957.
McCaskill’s center stands about 450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 300 ft to 530 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace deposits (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 53×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Marlstone, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Marlstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 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. 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 McCaskill reaches the Gulf of America by way of Blue Branch, Ozan Creek, Number One Bayou, Howard Creek, the Little Missouri, the Ouachita, the Black River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 600 river miles.
310 miles of the trip are on the Ouachita.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of McCaskill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McCaskill has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in August; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 55 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 McCaskill normally reaches 66° and falls to 41°. The record high is 85°, in 1955; the record low 18°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.62 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Nashville, 12 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.