The Melbourne 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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4.20 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1904. The next wettest, 4.03 inches, fell in 1958.
Melbourne’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 490 ft to 790 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Boulder Mountain, about 1,160 ft, 11 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows St. Peter Sanstone and Everton Formation (Middle Ordovician) (sandstone, dolostone), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. 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 18 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 0.6 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 Melbourne reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mill Creek, Piney Creek, the White River and the Mississippi: about 980 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 Melbourne; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Melbourne has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Melbourne normally reaches 59° and falls to 35°. The record high is 82°, in 2007; the record low 13°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.13 in, fell in 1996.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Calico Rock 2 WSW, 15 miles west-northwest, 270 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
