The Sedalia 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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76° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1984. Next is 75° in 1989.
Sedalia’s center stands about 5,840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,680 ft to 6,480 ft, a difference of 800 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Devils Head, about 9,680 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gravels and alluviums (gravel, unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old.
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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arkose, conglomerate, shale. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Granite, alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Arkose, shale, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.3 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 Sedalia reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,430 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sedalia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sedalia has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 86 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Sedalia normally reaches 52° and falls to 24°. The record high is 73°, in 2007; the record low −5°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.34 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1984 at Strontia Springs Dam, 9 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
